Ler'tdi
by rotarydialphone
Summary: She's come for vengence, but when a human huntress is captured by her prey the Company wants the memories and knowledge held in her tortured mind. OC's only. Rated for later violence, gore, language, and situations.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This is my first trial into the Alien/ Predator universe. I had this rule once, to only work on one story at at time, but that's out the window today. I have an idea of where this story is going and where it will end, but I don't expect it to get regular updates (at least not until I force myself to finish some other things). Eventually there will be something resembling cover art and an actual summary, and an explanation of the title. I'm sure there are typos and I don't care right now.

This is a teaser and only a teaser. The real chapter one will just have to be chapter two. :P

Enjoy.

* * *

 **The Huntress**

She was old.

At least, _old-looking,_ by twenty-fourth century standards. With modern medicine and the advancement of longevity, with the practicality, rather, with the _commonality_ of cosmetic procedures even the elderly in this day and age looked youthful long beyond their years.

But, not her. Not _this_ woman.

She was an untamed thing. Like something out of a history-vid, the sight of her invoking primal imagry in the back of the mind of witch doctors, voodoo spells, human sacrafice, and all manner of taboos unspoken but dredged forth like dark childhood fears long forgotten. She was the mother of monsters which lurked in the shadows and slithered unseen to nest in adolescence then burst forth from deep in the hearts of grown men just when they needed the strength of resolve the most.

She wore her age with pride. Even sitting there in the interview room, like a queen on a throne instead of a murder on the floor.

 _This wasn't really happening, was it?_

From the other side of the one-way glass, Briley swallowed hard. His spit was sour with fear and the aftertaste of bile and bitter coffee.

"Jesus," he murmured, perhaps as a plea, the vain expletive uttered to fill the viewing room with a noise other than his hammering heart and the blood rushing in his ears. He sighed. It was a tight intake of breath followed by a shuttering, brittle exhail. A sound bordering on the hysteria.

On the shallow counter before him were effects and weapons, the likes of which he had never seen in person nor tried too hard to imagine. He had heard the tales. Stories of alien hunters which spanned the last several hundred years of human history. Camp fire stories denied by the government, the drunken ramblings of an old ex-con decades ago, stories told and retold, gaining and losing snatches of detail in the telling. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to see here. But, they were so much more and so much less than anything Briley had heard and there was indeed something to see here.

But, those hunters were not supposed to be _human..._

Briley let his fingertips trace the upper edge of a weapon, some manner of gun. The metal was rough to the touch as if pitted with age, secured in some unknowable manner to another bulky device. The charging mechanism, perhaps? That wasn't important, and it was far beyond his comprehension anyhow. What stopped Briley's fingertips in there caressing pursuit, what caused his breath to hitch in his throat and an unbidden whimper to escape his lips was the material which had been used to secure the monstrous weapon in slabs and straps to the old woman's shoulder. Leather...but but he knew it was not leather. The thick hide was tanned to a medium and sallow brown, glued in layers by an adhesive he assumed was as strong and unknowable as anything else he was seeing. A dancing girl adorned it, one arm disappearing beneath the machinery, but a dancing girl clear enough in blue-green, faded ink.

The not-leather was human flesh.

Deep in the back of his mind Briley knew, knew he had been there the day the tattoo had been placed, drawn on in indelible ink in the front room of a shady parlor on Eudora Prime. The vestage of a woman whose name he could no longer recall, etched on the skin like a brand; fast, tiny needles, blood and excess ink smeared across the beefy forearm of a hardened man fresh from the pen.

 _Kavin._

The name of his older brother left unspoken for decades resurfaced with the memory and Briley tried to force it back into that part of his mind which hoped to forever forget the sins of his youth. He shivered, his eyes closing involuntarily with the force of it, opening to light on assorted bits of armor. Shin guards. An off-center center chest plate. Forearm braces, one with a small computer of sorts and the other boasting protracted twin-blades. The lengths were curved, edges serrated top and bottom in opposing directions, the metal coated in a veneer of dried blood. There was a wad of netted material and not-leather booted shoes, a bladed disk tucked into a leather sheath, and various small knives of sharpened fangs and tusks, a bloody spear with the shafts retracted in, deadly points gleaming like a promise of death in dark hollows on each end. And, a necklace of small things strung together on a long, thin string: tiny skulls and odd teeth, dried strips of flesh and sinues, a piece of an indecernable creature's small paw, alien looking fingers and those which were all too familiar.

Briley bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper.

The center piece of this macabre jewelry was half a jawbone, distinguishable as human by the glitter of a gold cap on one remaining incisor.

 _Enin._

This time it was the memory of his younger brother's lady-killing smile which streaked through Briley's memory. _Lady-killing, Christ, what a poor choice of words,_ Briley chided himself, anything to destract from the thought of another name, another testament to his culpability and with it all the things he wished not to be forced to remember.

Enin's smile had been punctuated with uneven dimples and Briley had always been jealous of the boyish charm women saw in them. But, in his later years Enin's smile bore a flash of gold above the bottom lip and there was more swooning at this roguish display. Oh, if those foolish women had only known the tooth had been repaired after Enin had been caught with an underage girl and met her uncle's fist. Would women have swooned then, knowing the bad-boy whose attention they craved had realy been after their young daughters?

The old woman stirred and Briley looked up, jerked from long dead memories as she carefully lifted herself from the floor.

She moved with fluid grace, her skin the rich mahogany of African descent, hatched and mottled. An old burn fell across her left shoulder, the skin gnarled in a contorted scar. Her hair was waist length and twisted into frazzled locks, a shorter one ripped partly from her temple and hanging from a scrap of scalp. She didn't seem to mind. Her raven dreads were matted with blood and streaked through with coarse gray strands. Tiny curls escsped at the root-line. Odd clasps and rings of copper and gold colored metal encircled each lock at intervals and jangled sweetly as she turned her head, surveying a room empty but for herself. Hands calloused with use hung at her sides. Her bony-knuckled fingers had wide nails, thick and yellowed and filed into points. A thumb gently stroked the orbit of a broken skull which adorned the belt at one side of her wide hips.

Why hadn't that been confiscated? And what was she thinking as she took in her surroundings? Plotting, perhaps, as her thumb caressed the shard of skull?

A small strip of fabric in a shade of dry earth covered her crotch and aside from it she was nude. Her breasts hung in pendulous masses, dark areolea and nipples pointing to the floor. Yet, her muscles were toned, tensing and flexing beneath ancient and wrinkled, ashen and scarred flesh. Though her abdominals were rippled, her lower belly sagged slightly like a deflated baloon beneath the hollow of her navel above her belt. Her legs were strong, feet bare and calloused, toes as rough and boney as her fingers, with toenails thick and yellow and filed to match.

Briley knew without knowing the reek coming off of her was pure rotten death. Musty putrefaction. The oily smell of a long unwashed body mixed with the iron pungency of blood and the salty tang of dry sweat.

Vacant eyes stared as if unseeing, blinking with almost casual indifference. Wrinkles were etched at the corners of her eyes and mouth like trenches. Blood was crusted to her face, falling in shades of deep red across her neck and shoulder where it had leaked from the wound to her head. One side of her face was slowly deforming with an ugly bruise. A full bottom lip was split and the tip of a red-pink tongue explored the injury between teeth stained orange with blood.

Her face had a jowly softness which was utterly alarming otherwise. She could have been anyone's grandmother with that round, serene look were it not for the rest of her, her wounds and what she did and didn't wear. And there was that scar which adorned her forehead. Like a comma with its tail drawn too long and hooked around too far, it sat centered above her unruly brows, prominent even as time had creased her face.

And, those eyes.

If Briley hoped there was something in this woman which remained human, even a tiny piece to which he could make a plea for mercy it died right there in her eyes, in the depths of those black pools of contempt which held a viciousness and a hardened conviction. Her eyes said there was nothing, save her aged body which remained human.

Briley stood in captivated horror as she slowly sauntered to the one-way glass like a predator stalking its prey. Even knowing the image which greeted her on the other side was of herself, Briley felt as if she were looking into him, seeing all of his sins, hearing words he had never spoken, knowing everything he wanted desperately to forget.

As unlikely a thing it would seem to anyone else, Briley knew she had come for him. He could tell himself a thousand times it was _not,_ could _not_ be _her._ She would be at least sixty years old by now. It could be a coincidence, her choice of trophies, but he knew in his guts it was not. This old woman, this huntress forged in battles on worlds no other human had ever seen; a human somehow taken in and hardened and honed by a people whose existance the Company denied but whose technology they longed to exploit, she was _that_ girl. Or had been. Now, she was a monstress Briley had, by his complicence helped his brothers to create all of those decades ago. She had killed them, both of them he had no doubt, making trophies of their destinctive body parts. She had wanted him to see, wanted him to know the victim had become the predator and the predators had become her prey and soon it would be Tem Briley's turn to die. The Devil had come to collect her final due.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Yeah, so, I managed to eek this out on my lunch breaks. I'm sure it has typos o'plenty. Yes, it's long and rambley, but I'm doing stuff here. Just go with it for now, please. A real-ish summary is up. Cover art still pending. No explanation of the title just yet.

Now, I _REALLY_ have to get to working on other things.

Enjoy.

* * *

 **Chapter One**

Orsan Smart was a bit of a drunkard, and no one would accuse him of living up to his family name. He was a large and imposing man with a lumbering, casual gate. Currently he was cursing under his breath, wincing as the medic pressed a dressing gooped in medigel to the wound in his naked shoulder. The wound went clean through, splintered bits of scapula sticking out from the back side and shards sliding amid a river of blood down his back. Any other person would have been writhing in pain but Orsan Smart probably had enough tar running through his system to kill a horse. The drug was nasty stuff. Highly illegal, but it wasn't as if the inhabitants of LV-3209 had a great number of ways in which to entertain themselves on or off duty. And Warden Tem Briley was the law here, so if he turned a blind eye there would be no one to complain.

"Dead?" Briley asked for the third time.

"Yes, dead," Orsan growled through clenched teeth as the medic, a small man named Nikoli Pernelis repeated the process on Smart's back.

"All three?"

"Yes, _Goddamnit,"_ Orsan roared.

Briley bristled. He wasn't use to subordinates taking that kind of tone with him. "You're sure?" He pressed on.

"Christ, Warden, yes. I told you: they're all dead. Left hanging from the damned rocks like dressed deer. Can't say I got a good ID on them, seeing as they weren't wearing any _skin,_ but I'm pretty fucking sure it was our guys. Who the hell else would they be?"

Briley ignored the question. The answer was simple enough. There wasn't anyone else it could be other than the missing trio. It had all started just after noon count, though Briley hadn't been informed until much later. Officer Mansfield Drake had been sent out to investigate the site of a radar blip, a ping just at the northern edge of the B79 mountain range. The alarm was assumed to be nothing more than an anomoly, a glitch in the monitoring system. Such things happened all the time. There was no wildlife on the planet to speak of, and LV-3209 wasn't the kind of place any sane person visited of their own volition. It was a working prison colony. Strictly off-limits to unauthorized persons and craft. Which was why every blip picked up in the local region had to be investigated. LV-3209 was a rocky world, and unforgiving. With temperatures low enough to give any one exposed to the elements hypothermia as soon as the sun set. It was secure by nature, and the terreforming venture was fully funded by the Company. The convicts-turned-wildcaters and their keepers had a fairly easy time. The Company paid well and provided generous amenaties, all they asked in return was a strict watch on their investment. The last thing Wayland-Yutani wanted to facilitate at the ass-end of the galaxy was a little coup.

When Drake didn't check in or answer his radio, Jin Morrison and Petri Inggold had gone out to see what was going on. And when they also failed to report back or respond the Warden had gotten involved. He sent Orsan Smart to find the three idiots and bring them all back, or at least tag the rovers they had taken for recovery.

"And you say a woman did it?" Briley pressed on.

Orsan fumed, "I'm guessing so. Wretched bitch. I told you, she dropped out of fucking nowhere. Look what she did to me?" He spread his uninjured arm wide.

There was a long cut which spanned his middle bleeding onto his pants.

"She nearly gutted me," Smart snapped, seeming befuddled by such a happening. It was rare anyone wished to tangle with him, and even rarer they managed to actually injure the brute of a man. The fact that a woman managed it would have been entertaining under any other circumstance.

Briley humphed then stood watching as Nikoli went on treating Orsan's injuries. Smart's left eye was nearly swelled shut, and his nose was smashed like an overripe tomato, a bloody, pulpy mess in the center of his face. He was missing front teeth.

"Just glad I had my electro-pistol. But, I'm fine," Orsan sneered, "Thanks for asking."

The electro-pistol was a form of taser, very effective, pretty much the only weapons allowed on the station, and the officers were glad to have even that small concession. The residents didn't tend to give them problems, but given the nature of their pasts one could never be too trusting.

Briley sighed, "You got her?"

Orsan gave him a pointed look, "Interview room 3. Go see for yourself if you think I'm a liar."

Warden Tem Briley didn't think Orsan Smart was a liar. A bit of a braggard maybe, but not a liar. He was young, at nearly forty to Briley's almost seventy-five, and one of Briley's best security officers. If what Smart said was true then Drake, Morrison, and Inggold were dead. The colony was small but the deaths left them with only nine, including the injured Smart, to manage a population of fifty-six.

Briley cleared his throat, "Well then, good man bringing her in."

Orsan gave a sardonic salute.

"I want a written report as soon as possible."

Nikoli looked up then, "He'll need at least a hour in the auto-surgeon."

"Report first," Briley snapped, "While it's fresh."

With that, Briley excused himself from the room making no time for rebuttals. He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment. He wasn't in a hurry to see this woman Orsan Smart had dragged in. Just thinking of the description Smart had provided made Briley's stomach clench. Something nagged at the back of his mind, as if Briley knew he'd heard it all before.

Putting the thought out of his mind Briley straightened, smoothing his rumpled uniform and heading down the hall. The Station on LV-3209 was small. Nothing more than a clutch of pre-fab buildings nestled at the base of the main terreforming tower. It wasn't high-living by any means, but the Company did keep the officers and the Warden comfortable, and it was a good gig for a man looking at double retirement in the next year.

Interview room 3 was the last down a series of winding passageways. The narrow door was locked, the light on the keypad next to it glowing red. Briley walked past the door and stopped at its twin. Each interview room had a separate viewing room attached by a one way window which allowed spectators to look in. Standard setup for any law enforcement station. It was the viewing room Briley entered. Darkness greeted him, punctuated by the misty glow of light filtering in from the interview room on the other side of the one-way glass. As his eyes adjusted Briley looked over the odd shapes of items lined out on the counter. A few shapes took form and Briley felt his heart slip into his boots and his breathing became shallow. He looked through the glass into the room and his world slowly fell apart. There was a woman in there as promised. And what a woman.

She was old.

At least, _old-looking,_ by twenty-fourth century standards. With modern medicine and the advancement of longevity, with the practicality, rather, with the _commonality_ of cosmetic procedures even the elderly in this day and age looked youthful long beyond their years.

But, not her. Not _this_ woman.

She was an untamed thing. Like something out of a history-vid, the sight of her invoking primal imagry in the back of the mind of witch doctors, voodoo spells, human sacrafice, and all manner of taboos unspoken but dredged forth like dark childhood fears long forgotten. She was the mother of monsters which lurked in the shadows and slithered unseen to nest in adolescence then burst forth from deep in the hearts of grown men just when they needed the strength of resolve the most.

She wore her age with pride. Even sitting there in the interview room, like a queen on a throne instead of a murder on the floor.

 _This wasn't really happening, was it?_

From the other side of the one-way glass, Briley swallowed hard. His spit was sour with fear and the aftertaste of bile and bitter coffee.

"Jesus," he murmured, perhaps as a plea, the vain expletive uttered to fill the viewing room with a noise other than his hammering heart and the blood rushing in his ears. He sighed. It was a tight intake of breath followed by a shuttering, brittle exhail. A sound bordering on the hysteria.

On the shallow counter before him were effects and weapons, the likes of which he had never seen in person nor tried too hard to imagine. He had heard the tales. Stories of alien hunters which spanned the last several hundred years of human history. Camp fire stories denied by the government, the drunken ramblings of an old ex-con decades ago, stories told and retold, gaining and losing snatches of detail in the telling. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to see here. But, they were so much more and so much less than anything Briley had heard and there was indeed something to see here.

But, those hunters were not supposed to be _human..._

Briley let his fingertips trace the upper edge of a weapon, some manner of gun. The metal was rough to the touch as if pitted with age, secured in some unknowable manner to another bulky device. The charging mechanism, perhaps? That wasn't important, and it was far beyond his comprehension anyhow. What stopped Briley's fingertips in there caressing pursuit, what caused his breath to hitch in his throat and an unbidden whimper to escape his lips was the material which had been used to secure the monstrous weapon in slabs and straps to the old woman's shoulder. Leather...but but he knew it was not leather. The thick hide was tanned to a medium and sallow brown, glued in layers by an adhesive he assumed was as strong and unknowable as anything else he was seeing. A dancing girl adorned it, one arm disappearing beneath the machinery, but a dancing girl clear enough in blue-green, faded ink.

The not-leather was human flesh.

Deep in the back of his mind Briley knew, knew he had been there the day the tattoo had been placed, drawn on in indelible ink in the front room of a shady parlor on Eudora Prime. The vestage of a woman whose name he could no longer recall, etched on the skin like a brand; fast, tiny needles, blood and excess ink smeared across the beefy forearm of a hardened man fresh from the pen.

 _Kavin._

The name of his older brother left unspoken for decades resurfaced with the memory and Briley tried to force it back into that part of his mind which hoped to forever forget the sins of his youth. He shivered, his eyes closing involuntarily with the force of it, opening to light on assorted bits of armor. Shin guards. An off-center center chest plate. Forearm braces, one with a small computer of sorts and the other boasting protracted twin-blades. The lengths were curved, edges serrated top and bottom in opposing directions, the metal coated in a veneer of dried blood. There was a wad of netted material and not-leather booted shoes, a bladed disk tucked into a leather sheath, and various small knives of sharpened fangs and tusks, a bloody spear with the shafts retracted in, deadly points gleaming like a promise of death in dark hollows on each end. And, a necklace of small things strung together on a long, thin string: tiny skulls and odd teeth, dried strips of flesh and sinues, a piece of an indecernable creature's small paw, alien looking fingers and those which were all too familiar.

Briley bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper.

The center piece of this macabre jewelry was half a jawbone, distinguishable as human by the glitter of a gold cap on one remaining incisor.

 _Enin._

This time it was the memory of his younger brother's lady-killing smile which streaked through Briley's memory. _Lady-killing, Christ, what a poor choice of words,_ Briley chided himself, anything to destract from the thought of another name, another testament to his culpability and with it all the things he wished not to be forced to remember.

Enin's smile had been punctuated with uneven dimples and Briley had always been jealous of the boyish charm women saw in them. But, in his later years Enin's smile bore a flash of gold above the bottom lip and there was more swooning at this roguish display. Oh, if those foolish women had only known the tooth had been repaired after Enin had been caught with an underage girl and met her uncle's fist. Would women have swooned then, knowing the bad-boy whose attention they craved had realy been after their young daughters?

The old woman stirred and Briley looked up, jerked from long dead memories as she carefully lifted herself from the floor.

She moved with fluid grace, her skin the rich mahogany of African descent, hatched and mottled. An old burn fell across her left shoulder, the skin gnarled in a contorted scar. Her hair was waist length and twisted into frazzled locks, a shorter one ripped partly from her temple and hanging from a scrap of scalp. She didn't seem to mind. Her raven dreads were matted with blood and streaked through with coarse gray strands. Tiny curls escsped at the root-line. Odd clasps and rings of copper and gold colored metal encircled each lock at intervals and jangled sweetly as she turned her head, surveying a room empty but for herself. Hands calloused with use hung at her sides. Her bony-knuckled fingers had wide nails, thick and yellowed and filed into points. A thumb gently stroked the orbit of a broken skull which adorned the belt at one side of her wide hips.

Why hadn't that been confiscated? And what was she thinking as she took in her surroundings? Plotting, perhaps, as her thumb caressed the shard of skull?

A small strip of fabric in a shade of dry earth covered her crotch and aside from it she was nude. Her breasts hung in pendulous masses, dark areolea and nipples pointing to the floor. Yet, her muscles were toned, tensing and flexing beneath ancient and wrinkled, ashen and scarred flesh. Though her abdominals were rippled, her lower belly sagged slightly like a deflated baloon beneath the hollow of her navel above her belt. Her legs were strong, feet bare and calloused, toes as rough and boney as her fingers, with toenails thick and yellow and filed to match.

Briley knew without knowing the reek coming off of her was pure rotten death. Musty putrefaction. The oily smell of a long unwashed body mixed with the iron pungency of blood and the salty tang of dry sweat.

Vacant eyes stared as if unseeing, blinking with almost casual indifference. Wrinkles were etched at the corners of her eyes and mouth like trenches. Blood was crusted to her face, falling in shades of deep red across her neck and shoulder where it had leaked from the wound to her head. One side of her face was slowly deforming with an ugly bruise. A full bottom lip was split and the tip of a red-pink tongue explored the injury between teeth stained orange with blood.

Her face had a jowly softness which was utterly alarming otherwise. She could have been anyone's grandmother with that round, serene look were it not for the rest of her, her wounds and what she did and didn't wear. And there was that scar which adorned her forehead. Like a comma with its tail drawn too long and hooked around too far, it sat centered above her unruly brows, prominent even as time had creased her face.

And, those eyes.

If Briley hoped there was something in this woman which remained human, even a tiny piece to which he could make a plea for mercy it died right there in her eyes, in the depths of those black pools of contempt which held a viciousness and a hardened conviction. Her eyes said there was nothing, save her aged body which remained human.

Briley stood in captivated horror as she slowly sauntered to the one-way glass like a predator stalking its prey. Even knowing the image which greeted her on the other side was of herself, Briley felt as if she were looking into him, seeing all of his sins, hearing words he had never spoken, knowing everything he wanted desperately to forget.

As unlikely a thing it would seem to anyone else, Briley knew she had come for him. He could tell himself a thousand times it was _not,_ could _not_ be _her._ She would be at least sixty years old by now. It could be a coincidence, her choice of trophies, but he knew in his guts it was not. This old woman, this huntress forged in battles on worlds no other human had ever seen; a human somehow taken in and hardened and honed by a people whose existance the Company denied but whose technology they longed to exploit, she was _that_ girl. Or had been. Now, she was a monstress Briley had, by his complicence helped his brothers to create all of those decades ago. She had killed them, both of them he had no doubt, making trophies of their destinctive body parts. She had wanted him to see, wanted him to know the victim had become the predator and the predators had become her prey and soon it would be Tem Briley's turn to die. The Devil had come to collect her final due.

* * *

If it helps to know, I was born Charletta Bernice Coleman.

Yes, I was _ooman_ once.

In the year 2302 I was nine years old and lived with my mother in an urban enclave of what had once been south Atlanta, Georgia. We still called it that, even though much of the United States had been dissolved, absorbed into a new governing order under the guiding hand of the Company. This I had read about in history books at school. What the books didn't say was that the southern United States was a wasteland of forgotten and long impoverished cities whose histories were lost to time and rewriting.

But, that's not the story you've come to hear.

Let an old woman ramble a bit first.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, Atlanta. Now, that was on Old Earth, of course. We called it Old Earth even then. There was no New Earth but humanity had spread out into the stars by this time and found lush planets to inhabit. That was where those with means lived, leaving the destitute behind on a planet with dirty atmosphere and depleted soil. Ripe with unhappiness. The heart of industry and the Colonial Marines still beat there, and there was money to be made, rich cities I had only heard of, but most of Old Earth was weak and damaged, like a victim left to slowly die in shame of her wounds. That is where the convoluted story of my life began, at least, the part which interests you.

Why 2302? When I look back on my life, and I do, this is always when it begins for me. I could have been anything else, or nothing at all had my life not changed that year.

What I'm about to tell you may all seem fantastic, unbelievable. But it's true, at least as best I can remember. Just know that I was a child once. An _ooman_ child who dreamed silly childhood dreams and played make believe games with other children born to hard, cruel poverty. I wasn't always a hunter but, now I'm getting ahead of myself.

I attended school and was an obedient little girl. My mother was a widow who barely scraped by. In the summer of 2302, in the months when school was out and I spent my time alone in the apartment or in the school yard down the road playing with friends whose names I can no longer recall, she met a man who changed our lives.

Don't you dare think less of her for it. That man is not the villian of this story nor is she. My _ooman_ mother was a hard-working woman. Slaving all hours of the day and night just to keep food on the table, the bills paid, and the roaches at bay. Even being so young I knew this. Children know and understand more than adults give them credit for.

I have no memories of my biological father, I was too young when he died. Mother said he was a kind man, but of him she never said more. I never thought of my mother as a woman who would meet a man or date. Such adult matters were so far removed from anything a child thinks too much about. But it happened. How? I do not know. But, I like to think she met Captain Callis Brownlee in some romantic, fantastic fashion. Maybe in the greasy spoon diner where she toiled away her evenings. Perhsps he ordered coffee. Black with one sugar. I always imagin that's how he'd order it. And maybe mother served it to him and he fell in love with her smile then and there. Perhaps he went into the casino where she spent her nights serving cocktails to people who threw away far more money in one night than she could ever hope to earn in the whole year. He was there on leave to play his hand at Black Jack. A grown up sounding game. There at one of the tables she served him Borbon, a true adult drink, and it was love at first sight. Or, perhaps he visited the upscale boutique cafe where she watrissed by day. He ordered lobster and steak and her smile took his breath away. Maybe it was one of these things my childish brain concocted, or perhaps it was not romantic at all.

But, he was there in the summer of 2302. In our lives like a hurricane and nothing would ever be the same.

 _Captain_ Callis Brownlee.

He seemed so fancy in his white uniform, and with a fancy hat and title to match. He was a tall, burly black man with a gentle, genuine smile and a shiny, bald head beneath his fancy hat.

That evening in the summer of 2302 he arrived at our door with flowers. Two bouquets, one for mother and one for me. I thought it odd that mother had come home early that day and dressed in her church dress and painted her face. Odd that I had been scrubbed vigorously of dirt from the play yard and told to dress in my own clothes reserved for church. Then Captain Callis Brownlee had arrived at our door via a polished limousine which looked outlandish parked at a curb in the ghetto.

That evening is still a thing to remember. I had never flown before but the limo which whisked us away pulled to a small airfield and then there we were in a private jet zipping down the runway. Captain Callis Brownlee flew, naturally, with my mother and me squished into the back. He took us to a city whose name I never learned, to dinner at the nicest restaurant I have ever seen with a name I could not pronounce and menus couldn't read, then to a play acted out in a language I couldn't understsnd. I felt awed, and a bit ashamed. But, never once did Captain Callis Brownlee make us feel bad that our best clothes looked shabby compared to those around us, and no one acted as if they noticed. Though I'm sure they did.

Even now it feels like a dream. But, most of the memories of my time among _oomans_ does.

Mother kissed him that night. I wasn't supposed to see, but I crept to the front room window and peeped between the curtains and there they were. Oh, I had been put to bed, still in my church dress. They thought I was sleeping. I had slept, and pretended to sleep, most of the trip back, carried between jet and limo, limo and bed, held in Captain Callis Brownlee's strong arms. But I had heard them talking the whole time and their talking kept me awake.

Captain Callis Brownlee was taking a colony ship to another planet and he wanted a wife to accompany him. Now, this is where my romantic ideas of how and where they met falls apart a bit. Looking back, I imagine it was more of a status symbol for him and desperation for her and less romantic than I like to think for either of them. Just two lonely people who happened across one another's paths. But, he did love her. And she loved him, of that I am certain.

That is why I cannot be angry at her. I know what it is to love to someone with such desperate fierceness. Yes, even me. I know what it is to grab on to a being so tightly, a being who can see past what I am and am not, who wants nothing more than to stand at my side and have me at his.

Forgive me, I'm getting ahead of myself again.

I suppose the kiss, the one between my mother and Captain Callis Brownlee, a kiss full on the mouth, punctuated with animal groans and hands roaming was mother's answer to his proposition. She saw a way out of her life and she took it. Captain Callis Brownlee could give us everything we never had and things we couldn't then imagine. He was a good man. You'll never hear me say otherwise, and my mother was a good woman. Perhaps if things hadn't gone so horribly wrong I would have grown up to make something of myself because of their union. I might have been happy among _oomans._ Successful at something other than being a hunter of men or the killer that I am. But, that isn't how my story goes and I'm too old to rewrite it now even in my mind.

Less than a week after I snuck a peek and saw my mother kissing Captain Callis Brownlee on the stoop of our ramshackle apartment, mother quit her jobs. All of them. We were picked up not long after and taken to a hospital. Not the clinic in south Atlanta which catered to gang bangers who had been shot or druggies who had overdosed, but a nice hispital with polished floors and smiling faces. There we were questioned at length, treated politely by nurses and doctors who took samples of our blood and hair, urine and stool. They listened to our hearts and had us take deep breaths to hear our lungs. They scanned our bodies. Inked our fingers and took impressions of our teeth. That was the first and only time I saw a dentist.

The next day we were packing.

"Take only the things you'll wish you hadn't left behind," mother said to me as she picked through her closet. She didn't take even half of her clothes and mostly she packed pictures and little effects.

We were done in less than a day. We didn't have much. All of the furniture, dishes, lamps, and rugs were left behind. I took stuffed toys and a few of my clothes, and a book, _The Wizard of Oz,_ and a worn charm bracelet, both of which mother had given me for my past birthday. In all it was just enough to fill two suitcases.

The next morning we were picked up by a limousine and whisked off to the airport where a different jet took us to New York. We met Captain Callis Brownlee there and spent an entire day shopping for new clothes. Enough to fill ten brand new suitcases. The Captain's future wife and daughter were to have the very best. It was dizzying, the sudden change my life had taken. From dime store rags purchased on discount day to Fifth Avenue designs. No expense spared. And before you think otherwise, it was all as genuine as Captain Callis Brownlee's smile. To my knowledge he did it because it was in his heart to do. A loving gesture to the woman who would soon be his wife and the girl who would be as his own daughter.

After shopping, with our purchases sent before us in another car, Captain Callis Brownlee took us to an early dinner at an outdoor cafe, then we left the city and were driven to the Spaceport. There we went by shuttle and from my window seat I first glimpsed the vastness of space. It's truly amazing how tiny one feels when all the blackness of the universe is looking back at you. Then, I saw the ship. The _Excelsior._ It was such a magnificent thing. As large as a city. A hulking mass of lines and planes in gray metal. The most amazing thing I had ever seen.

I cried then. At the sight of the ship the reality of my world set in. I was leaving behind everything I knew. Brave new wonders awaited me but the comforts of familiarity were gone. Shabby and run down as they had been. Like Old Earth, except for my mother and a few trinkets, everything I knew was being left behind.

But my grief was short lived. There were other children aboard the _Excelsior._ Children my age. Children who were clean and well mannered and didn't know I had grown up so differently from them. There was Isbel MacMurray, a cheery girl with curly red hair and skin ruddy with freckles. She became my best friend in those first few weeks before cryosleep.

That little time aspace was spent exploring the _Excelsior_ with Isbel, learning the names of some of the crew, and standing by my mother in a white wedding dress of my own made in just my size as she and Captain Callis Brownlee married. Lieutenant Malik MacMurray had been Captain Callis Brownlee's best man, and Mrs. Lieutenant MacMurray was mother's matron of honor. The ship's Chaplain married them and then there was a big party which seemed to span the entire ship. Then we were officially under way. Off to our new home among the stars.

As I said, the _Excelsior_ was a large ship and it's largeness easily fooled the mind into thinking it limitless. It was a colony ship after all, designed to ferry people by the thousands. Thirty thousand, more or less a few hundred to be completely accurate. Most of these souls had been put into stasis before boarding, tucked away in their cryotubes, stacked into bays like luggage. Isbel and I snuck down to the living-hold and peered through a thick glass window once just to see. The mind cannot fathom so many people at once, each sleeping the dreamless sleep of cryo, tiny glowing pads at the foot of their tubes keeping tabs on their status and ready to sound an alarm if anything goes wrong. I'm sure you've heard people who say they dream in cryosleep, but it isn't true. At least, it wasn't for me.

I had had my tonsils removed when I was seven. That was how cryosleep felt. One minute you're awake, in a cryotube with the lid opened up instead of on a surgery table, nurses bustling around you, frightened and cold, with tubes in your arms, hearing a machine ping back the rhythm of your heart. And then, you're gone, with no memory of falling asleep. Walking up was just as quick. I remember feeling as if no time had gone by at all, wondering if I had just briefly closed my eyes. Only, this time instead of a recovery ward I woke still inside my cryotube. I felt disoriented as if somehow my mind knew time had passed but just couldn't fathom it. I had a horrid taste in my mouth, and my mother must have woken before me because she was there when I cried for her. And Captain Callis Brownlee, smiling his angelic smile.

We were in the proximity of our destination: Eudora Prime. It would take a further two weeks for the _Excelsior_ to approach and make planetfall.

Now, I'm sure when you think of colonizing a planet, your mind conjures images of man against nature. _Oomans_ taking to a place never before touched by people. That's what I thought. But it isn't true. Oh, I'm sure at some point the planet had been untouched by civilization, but by the time the _Excelsior_ brought us to Eudora Prime there were already people there. The wilds tamed. Cities small but thriving. What I remember most was the color. So much color. Green and blue and clouds a vivid white. Strange plants and neon flowers at every walk. The air was clean and alive with the sounds of birds. Trees rustling with small animals. The streets were clean and not one building had a boarded up window. It was hot. Humid. Like Georgia in mid summer. A sweltering heat that caused sweat to bead on the face. Otherwise it was paradise.

A handful of workers greeted us once the _Excelsior_ took up a stationary orbit and docked with the space station. To hear the adults talk, the passengers would be woken over a series of days, deshipped and reunited with their belongings to begin their new lives. As for us, mother and I stayed in a furnished apartment with Captain Callis Brownlee in a town called Emerald City. Just like in my favorite book.

The apartment was a nice place, free of vermin and smelling of fresh paint and the manicured lawns outside our open windows in the early mornings and late afternoons. It was a magical place with wonders around every bend just waiting to be found. In the evenings after Captain Callis Brownlee returned from his duties aboard the _Excelsior_ we would have dinner. Mother didn't have to work, so she spent her days keeping house, and always had a nicely cooked dinner waiting. Sometimes I would help her in the kitchen with the shiny new pots and gleaming, matching cutlery, timing the meals just right, and then we would all three eat together like a real family. After the meals she and Captain Callis Brownlee would browse houses listed for sale on the local markets. I learned that this last trip from Old Earth would be his final one. He was transferring into a more local ship captaining position among the colonies. It would give him time to devote to his new little family and take advantage of his substantial credits.

I was included on this house shopping. My opinions valued and asked after. On the weekends we visited homes, following a pants-suited, blond realtor through cavernous but empty dwellings while she prattle on about the amenities and her high heeled shoes went _clack, clack, clack_ on the varnished floors. Mother and Captain Callis Brownlee decided on one at the outskirts of the city. A two story monstrosity with a spacious front the yard newly sodden and fenced in white picket. There was room for a garden out back, to mother's delight. There was more shopping, this time for furniture and area rugs and dressers and armoires. Boring things to a child of nine. We moved in a week before Captain Callis Brownlee left for his first flight in-system, and I began school a month later while he was still away. I will never forget walking into that school. The smell of it, like new books and floor polish and young bodies hyper and anxious to learn. The teachers wore smiles and the classes were small. In my new, crisp uniform and with my hair done just the day before at the salon. I sat at my neat desk in awe. It was so different from my school back on Old Earth. In ways I can scarcely describe. In my new life there was money for private tutors to help me catch up, and two evenings a week I took lessons on the piano. I had my shipboard friend Isbel MacMurray in most of my classes and every third weekend we got to have sleepovers with pizza and popcorn, movies and trips to the zoo.

Captain Callis Brownlee bought mother a brand new car with real leather seats. The years passed swiftly in those days, swept away in a warm embrace of wealth and happiness. For my thirteenth birthday I asked to become a Brownlee. I could have asked for anything, but to have Captain Callis Brownlee's name was my greatest wish, a secret wish I had held to myself ever since mother had married him. The ease with which it happened left me feeling I should have asked sooner. I also got a puppy that year. Not some mongrl off the street which came to me seeking scraps who I imagined in my heart was mine, but a real dog of my own. A standard poodle I named Duke who went to the pet parlor every six weeks to have his tan coat clipped into fun designs and his tiny nails polished pink.

What's that you say?

Get on with it?

Hush. Just a little bit longer now.

It was a Friday. Mother dropped me off at school that morning. Along with my backpack I had my little suitcase for a sleepover with Isbel. I will never forget, because that's the last time I heard my _ooman_ mother's voice. I wish I could say it was happy, but it was instead tinged with a palpable sadness. I had gotten a poor grade in math and science in spite of hours of tutoring and mother was still cross with me.

As we pulled to a stop at a red light mother said suddenly, "Promise me something, Letta."

I looked at her from the corner of my eye, seeing her jaw set, eyes forward on the road and hands gripping the steering wheel making her knuckles blanch.

I nodded and she went on, "Promise me you'll take advantage of all you've been given."

I hoped this wasn't going to turn into a lecture. I'd heard it all before, how mother had never been given any advantage, and her mother before her and so on had struggled in abject poverty.

"Promise me you won't be the kind of girl who lives a life she needs a man to come save her from."

I nodded again, words failing me as I saw tears brimming in her eyes. I had never, through all life had delt her before, seen my mother cry.

I knew she loved Captain Callis Brownlee, but I recognized then she must have had her own, secret regrets. The light turned green and I reached for her with my small hand. She took it. Kissed my fingers and then we were pulling to the school. I grabbed my things and hopped from the car. I looked back, and the last time I saw my _ooman_ mother she was wiping away tears as she drove away.

At the end of the school day Mrs. Lieutenant MacMurray picked us up from school. I should say Mrs. _Captain_ MacMurray. Isbel's father had been promoted by this time, captaining the _Excelsior_ in Captain Callis Brownlee's place. He was gone that weekend, and would be for a long time I presumed. Isbel was not her usual self. Gone was her cheer, replaced with a sullen anger, a rebelliousness which would ultimately lead to her undoing and another radical change in my own little life.

We watched movies and played games and gabbed about silly teenage girl things until long after dark. Mrs. Captain MacMurry had long given up and gone to bed. I was looking at myself in Isbel's dressing mirror, lamenting my still childish figure. Isbel had blossomed into a young lady over the fall, trading in her training bras for real ones while I lagged behind, flat-chested and still without my period.

Suddenly Isbel looked up from her data pad.

"Wanna see something cool?" she asked, a familiar twinkle in her eyes.

Well, of course I did. What teenager didn't?

Following Isbel's lead, I slipped my joggers on and we crept past her parent's room, down the stairs and out the back door of the house and on into the night.

Now, you'll remember I said I was an obedient child, and up until that night I always had been. What overcame me I don't rightly know, maybe I was simply following along, it wasn't in my nature to chat back or put up a fuss. If I had balked Isbel might have changed her mind, fearing her mother would wake to overhear. She might still be alive, with children and grandchildren of her own by now and I might have been able to keep the promise I had so recently made to my mother. But, it didn't happen that way.

Isbel's house was much further into the city than the one I shared with my mother and father. I had come to think of Captain Callis Brownlee that way by this time. He had even come to my school with other parents one day and spoken all about his job. I felt very proud and important being _Captain_ Callis Brownlee's daughter. Jacab Briley's older cousin had spoken that day, too. Deputy Tem Briley, in his deep brown sheriff's uniform. Shiny badge and gun and all. He told us what to do in an emergency and claimed that he and other police officers were our friends and we shouldn't be afraid of them, that the police were there to help.

But Deputy Tem Briley was not my friend. And I soon learned he would not help me when I needed him most.

The night was warm, as it always was on Eudora Prime. Isbel and I walked along the sidewalk, sneaking through alleyways between houses. An occasional car motored down a road nearby and a siren cried once in the distance. After a while, once we're were past the houses and walking through the outskirts of the little town I tired of this game and took to asking Isbel if we were there yet, were we close, and if this cool thing was really so cool.

She answered, "Not yet," and "Just a little farther," and "You'll see."

I never did. I never got to know what drew us out in the night in our bedclothes, what this cool thing was Isbel wanted to show me.

You'll understand soon enough why it's taking me so long to tell this part of the story. I've never said these things aloud before. _Mei'jadhi_ never asked. Maybe she knew the pain of remembering was too much for me. Maybe it never occurred to her to want to know. Their culture, _my_ culture isn't like _oomans'_ like that. But, it isn't entirely _Youtja_ either, nor _Hish. Kecende_ never asked, even though he and I spent many years hunting together, just the two of us. I don't think he needed to know why I was hunting _oomans,_ that I lived for the hunt was enough for him.

Isbel and I were crossing the street when a car turned from a side road, headlights catching us in their beams like two young deer. We scampered across and onto the sidewalk and turned to watch a Creature Catcher's van amble by. It slowed, but made the next turn, red taillights casting the road in a slowly disappearing eery glow as it plodded on. We breathed simultaneous sighs of relief. I assumed the Creature Catchers had some creatures to catch, maybe the nocturnal mammals which snuck in during the night to make a mess of trash cans and pillage garages, stealing tools and chewing anything they pleased. Eudora Prime had such creatures. Small like cats, but smart as monkeys, and more destructive and mischievous with their opposable thumbs. With these types of animals ever encroaching into the urban areas, the Creature Catchers couldn't be bothered with two teenage girls wandering the streets in their jammies. They had creature's to catch and relocate back out into the unincorporated jungle areas.

We continued on. When the van emerged from behind a building at a cross in the road up ahead then turned and slowly passed us a second time I started to feel nervous. They would call the police and Jacab Briley's cousin would come arrest us. But, Isbel was determined, and not wanting to start a fight so far from home I followed. When the van approached a third time my heart picked up. It was behind us now, and before I looked over my shoulder I knew it by its sound. The squeaky wheel and the trundeling carriage. Headlights crept beside us and Isbel cast a glance back.

"Keep going," she whispered. The fear in her voice alarmed me. Up until then she hadn't shown a hint of concern.

The van eased up and I when turned I saw the driver's window down and a hammy arm propped against the casing, elbow dangling out into the night. The arm was hairy and white and had a tattoo of a naked dancing lady on it. The arm's owner just stared past me at Isbel and his passenger leaned forward with a smile, front teeth shining wet against gold. I quickened my pace, grabbing Isbel's hand.

There was no where for us to go really. The street we were on was dark except for a few traffic lights and the neon signs of bakeries and cafes advertising that they were closed. No houses. No apartments. No one else venturing out in there pajamas.

"Hey, now," Naked Lady Tattoo said, the van's engine spooling up a bit as he accelerated to catch up to us, "Slow down there. Where are you two going so late at night?"

"Yeah," Gold Teeth added with a snicker.

Naked Lady Tattoo wholloped him in the chest with the back of his hand, "Cool it," he snarled.

We didn't answer. We just kept walking as fast as we could.

"You know, it's a kind of late for little girls to be out by themselves," mused Naked Lady Tattoo, "How's about you both get in and we'll give you a ride to where you're going."

Isbel shook her head and pulled me on.

How I wanted to not be afraid of them. I wanted them to be harmless and helpful. But something inside told me I should be afraid. We crossed the street and as soon as the van passed too far to turn Isbel jerked me down the side road and then we ran.

I heard Naked Lady Tattoo hiss a curse. I knew it was him because Gold Teeth was busy laughing his snickery laugh.

Tires squealed and gears shifted and the van's engine roared behind us. Mindless terror of a purely instinctual kind rose up in my chest. We were in trouble. And not the kind where getting picked up by the police was our greatest concern.

We couldn't have run for long, several blocks perhaps. Down alleys and across streets. Hands clasped as if each holding onto a lifeline. When we stopped, panting for breath. There was only the sound of my heart hammering and both of our labored breathing.

"I think we lost them," Isbel said between gulps.

"I want to go home," I breathed.

Isbel nodded, her face flush making her look even more freckled in the moonlight and a sheen of sweat shimmering on her forehead.

She nodded again, then crept along the building we had stopped to hide behind.

"I just need to see which way," she whispered.

She hunkered at the building's edge then peeped around and a gut wrenching scream tore from her throat. She backed into me fast and hard, her arms swinging wildly and her elbow catching me in the nose. I heard it crunch as it gave way and for a moment I couldn't see, couldn't even get my brain to think. Somewhere in the fog Isbel screamed again and then the sound was cut off, muffled. There was scraping and shuffling and Gold Teeth's laugh.

I turned from the noise, intent on running but my eyes were full of water and refused to open all the way. I only made it a few steps before a hand grabbed my arm, jerking me from my feet. I screamed then, a balwing, animal sound which frightened me even more. A hand clamped over my mouth tightly, thumb digging into my broken nose and for a moment I saw stars behind my eyelids. I tried to scream the pain out, thrashed and wanted to escape my own body if that's what it took to get away from the pain and the fear and whatever it was that was happening. It was all too much, because fast as a blink, everything went dark.

This is not easy for me to remember. Oh, I remember it just fine, in all of it's aweful detail. I've even dreamt bout it. The nightmares come less and less as time goes by. I've gone years without waking to the sound of Isbel's screams and I've never set out to recall it on purpose, this thing that made me what I am.

I rousted from the darkness to a gentle and rhythmic shaking and a stabbing pain in my leg which jarred as the surface beneath me softly bucked. There was some noise, not a screaming, nothing loud, but something I didn't understand. An huffing, animal grunting. My leg hurt. I opened my eyes, feeling the peeling back of my lids all the way into my shattered nose. The first thing I saw was the hashed metal of a cage, then a set of black eyes looking back at me, their surface glinting a reflective yellow as the indecernable creature tucked in the back cocked it's head in regard. There were many cages, from the floor where I sat to the sloped ceiling not far above. It smelled of amonia and scat, faintly of bleach and stale cigarettes. My left leg was resting against the edge of a cage and a bent bit of wire had ripped my pajama bottom. I could feel the wire stabbing into my skin. I was in the Creature Catcher's van and something aweful was happening.

I heard the grunting, faster now, with the squeaking of the van's suspension, and I felt the floor hopping more frantically beneath me. I could see Isbel's bloodshot, vacant green eyes looking back at me, one open more than the other. There was a hand over her mouth. I could see nothing below her eyes. The hand was attached to a thick forearm with a dancing naked lady tattoo and the van was full of panting and rutting. When he finally stopped, Naked Lady Tattoo swore and wiped at the sweat dripping from his nose. Then Gold Teeth loomed into view and he swore, too. He rolled Isbel over and she was limp like a rag doll.

Gold Teeth stood there for a few moments scratching at his bulging crotch through the pants of his Creature Catchers uniform before he spat, "She's fucking dead."

Then they were both looking at me. Naked Lady Tattoo shrugged. Gold Teeth swore again and grabbed Isbel's legs. He shoved her into the van and slammed the door. I heard keys jangle and a lock thunk into place. Then the sounds of an argument came muffled through the metal walls. Doors opened. The van jostled. Doors closed. The argument continued in the cab behind me as the engine fired up and I felt the van begin to move. I sat there among the creature cages staring at Isbel, tears burning my eyes and setting my throbbing nose on fire. Otherwise I felt a strange numbness. As if even then I was already folding in on myself. Of course I was afraid, I'll not tell you I wasn't.

I don't know how long the van drove but eventually it stopped. I heard a creaking, humming noise, then the van moved forward again. Stopped and the humming and creaking reversed it's timbre. Naked Lady Tattoo and Gold Teeth got out, their argument apparently finished as their footsteps faded away.

I'm fairly certain they left us there until morning. I imagine they needed time to think of what to do. Isbel hadn't moved except a slow lolling when the van had navigated turns, and even if they could just get rid of her they still had me to deal with.

Maybe if I promised not to tell...

Maybe if I could find a way out...

Maybe if someone would find me...

I slept. Strange as I'm sure it sounds. At some point I simply gave out. This time when I woke it was to vague muttering. In the twilight of waking, in those first few seconds before the mind forms a sense of present, when anything is still possible, I thought it had all been a terrible dream. I would open my eyes and the muttering would just be mother as she hummed to herself.

Then reality crashed in and I jerked upright, my head spinning as my nose throbbed. The muttering was the talking of two very bad men. They got in the van and the familiar noise of a motorized door rolling open began as the engine fired up. I don't know how long we drove but it seemed like a long time. When we finally stopped I heard feet crunching on gravel before keys rattled and the doors' lock thunked, it hinged open and Gold Teeth was standing there. He wasn't in his Creature Catcher's uniform anymore. He looked down at Isbel, made a face, sighed, then went about collecting her up as if I weren't even there.

It would be nice to say that _this_ was when I lashed out at him. This was when I found my opportunity and took it, but I didn't. I was too busy trying to remain unnoticed. Heart slamming in my chest, fear crawling through me, I felt like a mouse before a cat, a small mouse huddling in terror hoping if I didn't move death would simply loose interest and pass me by. I did my best not to even breathe. Gold Teeth obliged not to notice me as he wrestled Isbel into a big plastic garbage bag. He should have known. Maybe he'd never seen a dead body before. Maybe he didn't know that corpses don't keep their color.

Naked Lady Tattoo appeared. He wasn't in his uniform either.

He looked in at me, jerked his chin and said sternly, "Come on."

I stared at him. Blinked. Then slowly shook my head as if the action could somehow keep whatever was to be next from happening. I could freeze time with my refusal and just sit there in the back of van with the cages and the one captured creature. Maybe roll back time if I tried hard enough and never have ventured out into the night with Isbel to see the cool thing she never got to show me.

Naked Lady Tattoo growled, took one step up into the van, and his big hands were reaching for me. I opened my mouth to scream but only a raw, choking sob came out. It wouldn't have mattered. When he pulled me from the van we were in the middle of nowhere. There was jungle all around except for the blue gravel of the overgrown road we had come in on and the squat steel gray and rust of a long abandoned mining station. Naked Lady Tattoo pulled me by one arm and grabbed the sack containing Isbel.

"Clean up the mess," he said, leaving Gold Teeth behind.

The mining station was a labyrinth of stale smelling air and rotten, abandoned machinery. The jungle had broken in through grated windows, viney tendrils crawling the walls in places. Shriveled leaves littered work stations and piled into long stacks along floors. Naked Lady Tattoo hauled me down stairs and through doors, then he dropped Isbel's bag in an open room before dragging me to a wall lined with pipes. There he pulled a small spool of plastiplex cord from his pocket and used it to tie one of my wrists, securing the other end to a heavy metal pipe. It was foul smelling in that room. Old and dirty. Full of large, rusty and forgotten yellow barrels bearing the skull and crossbones and faded, peeling stickers with warnings in several languages.

 _Danger._

 _Corrosive._

I had a report due at the end of the month in Mr. Hinkson's history class. It was supposed to be on Eudora Prime's early industry. It had been a mining planet first. They used a caustic acid to separate earth and rock from the precious metals.

My heart lunged when Naked Lady Tattoo wrestled one large container of the stuff away from the wall and began picking at the latch with his pocket knife. My teenage mind had a vague idea of what they were planning next, how they intended to get rid of us. How they knew about this place and its contents I don't know. But, there we were.

After a fair amount of grunting and cursing, Naked Lady Tattoo managed the latch and pulled the securing ring from the barrel's top. He then pried the lid off and let it drop with a dull and warbling pinging flop to the floor. A sulforous odor filled the room. Gold Teeth sauntered in carrying a spray bottle in one hand.

"We're out of bleach," he said.

"I thought I told you to stock the van yesterday?"

"Yeah, well," Gold Teeth shrugged.

It was inoccuous, incongruently mundane talk given the situation.

Naked Lady Tattoo retrieved a set of thick rubber gloves hanging from a hook on the wall. They looked new. Whatever these men were about to do they had likely done before.

"Help me get her up," Naked Lady Tattoo said.

"But you got the gloves."

"Shut up and just lift. I don't need this shit splashing around."

They lifted the bag containing Isbel MacMurray and I wish I could say what happened next was as easy as they had planned. We all three thought her dead, me and Naked Lady Tattoo and Gold Teeth, but when they dunked her in that barrel half full of caustic acid what little life she had left came roaring back with a high-pitched animal screaming. I can't imagine a more aweful way to die. Even with all the ways I have seen others die, waking to the darkness of a black trash bag, being boiled alive in a barrel of acid.

"Fuck!" Gold Teeth shouted, his voice barely heard above Isbel's peeling noise.

She was thrashing, the bag containing her wriggling as it threw up thin streams of smoke. Naked Lady Tattoo reached with a hand and crammed Isbel further into the barrel and I clamped my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut against the dying, gurgling noises she made and the fading thumps from inside the barrel.

I'm sure I was crying. More scared then than I have ever been since.

When it was over I heard them replacing the lid and it's ringed latch, feet shuffling against the floor and intermittent cursing rising in the air with the smell of sulfur and melted plastic and putrid, mollified flesh. I opened my eyes, my whole body trembling, and they were standing there watching the barrel. Gold Teeth was white as a ghost and Naked Lady Tattoo was carefully peeling the long gloves from his hands. They didn't look at one another, and didn't look at me. They just left the barrel where it sat, sloshed acid bubbling the warning stickers and oozing down to the floor, and walked out leaving me there. Perhaps they had had enough for one day.

I was sure that stinking place would be my tomb, that they had left me there to die. I tried to escape but the plastiplex cord tethering me to the pipe wouldn't budge. I tried at it with my nails and then my teeth. I couldn't hope to budge the pipe. I screamed for help until my throat went raw.

Later on, a day maybe, time had taken on an abstract meaning, Gold Teeth returned, alone. Or at least he was the only one I saw. He brought a pizza as if this were some kind of party and tossed it toward me, the box flopping to the polycrete floor and sliding to my feet. He porduced a bottle of water and chunked it in my direction. Then he closed the door and was gone.

Was this it? We're they keeping me as some kind of pet to entertain themselves with at their leisure?

I was alone for another small eternity. At first, I didn't touch the pizza, too sickened with fear to feel hunger. But, eventually, hunger won out. By then the pizza was cold, cheese a leathery crust, pepperoni shriveled and grease pooled. The crust was like rubber, but I ate my fill, tears long cried out. I slept off an on, sipping my water and nibbling the pizza until both were gone.

At some point I heard noises. Footsteps jarring metal stairs. Indecernable voices talking back and forth from down the hall.

"...big face-grabbing spider things," said a voice I didn't know but felt I should have.

"Face-grabbing spider things? What the fuck were they smoking?" That was Naked Lady Tattoo.

I could hear their feet just outside the door but there was no movement to enter.

"Beats me," Strange Voice said, "But only three of them came back, some Ranger picked them up this morning, all babbling the same story. Said they found these egg-pod things in the jungle, and the spider things hatched out of them and attacked. There's still four missing out there. Herry's sent a search team out looking for them."

"Egg-pod things? Face-grabbing spiders? Sounds like some tweakers got ahold of some bad tar and then got lost in the woods," Gold Teeth added.

"You would know," Naked Lady Tattoo's voice chimed in.

The other two had a good laugh at his expense.

"The tweakers are in jail on a narc hold, mad as hell no one believes them, doc'll see them in a few hours once they calm down a bit, so now we're looking for the friends they probably offed, and with those two girls still missing, too, hell," Strange Voice cursed, "I've been up for three days now, the whole damned department is looking for those girls. I need some sleep. Just what the hell do you two want anyway? Why have you dragged me all the way out here?"

There was silence, then someone cleared their throte and the door swung open with a metalic groan.

Strange Voice was Deputy Tem Briley, like from that day at school, only this time his uniform was wilted with sweat and he looked exhausted. Our eyes met. My heart kicked up, I pulled to the length of my tether. He had said the police were there to help.

I reached for him and screamed, _"Deputy Briley!"_

His face took on a contorted look of mixed horror and confusion then he slammed the door closed as if to ward off what he had seen.

"Son of a bitch!" I heard him yell, "What have you two done?"

There was yelling all at once, none of it intelligible, then I heard Deputy Briley stammer, "Well, just, get rid of her."

 _Get rid of her._

Those were the words which damned him. The other two, Naked Lady Tattoo for sure, were already damned in the yet unknown recesses of my mind. Gold Teeth may have only helped in abducting Isbel and me, to my knowledge he didn't do anything but help, though I believe he would have had time and circumstance given him the opportunity. Had I been a pubescent white girl and not a flat-chested black one I don't believe I would have escaped the horror which was perpetrated on my friend before she was smoldered to death in acid. Gold Teeth may have brought me food and water, a small mercy, but he was just as damnable as Naked Lady Tattoo for his part, and Deputy Tem Briley for his. Gold Teeth just happened to be the first to die at my hands. He was the one within my reach when the huntress who lurked inside me broke through my _ooman_ shell in her raw and untrained glory.

"Get rid of her," Deputy Briley said again, "Do you know what this will do to me? Goddamnit. Just make her go away. Where is the other one? No, I don't want to know, just..."

"Now, look here, Tem, we're family..." Gold Teeth began.

"No, you look here," Deputy Briley snarled, "Just because we share a momma doesn't make us family. All you two have ever done is..."

A radio squawked, coming through like static, punctuated with a long series of words spoken in a panic.

There was silence, then Deputy Briley keyed his mic, "Say again department?"

"...twenty six, ten-twenty-six..need...ack up to main jai...oh, God...n the monitors...ree casualties...just came out of them...some kind of creatures just ...out of th...so much blood...e animals wen...nto the air ducts...can hear...ten-twenty-six, ten-twenty-six, uni...espond!"

I could hear voices acknowledging over the radio in broken succession.

"What the hell now," Deputy Briley huffed, "Come on, it sounds like we may need you two. You can figure something out and deal with the kid later."

But they wouldn't.

You see, Emerald City had become the sight of a _Kian_ _de Amedha Chiva_ _,_ a blooding hunt. Oh, I didn't know anything about all of that at the time, but looking back I know it now.

Left alone in the storage room of the abandoned mine, in the dark, without food or water, my best friend liquefied in a barrel of acid not ten feet away, a thirteen years old me waited to die.

If you've never existed in that state you'll not understand. There is a terror, yes, but also a tranquility. You make your peace with whatever diety. You inventory your life while still having a thready attachment to things you know will never happen. I wanted my mother. I couldn't die, I had a history report due. But, they were going to kill me. I was certain. If Deputy Tem Briley, who had been out looking for me and Ibsel wouldn't help, what hope did I have?

When my mind had spun itself out of feeling sorry over the situation, when it tired of trying to what-if me back to Friday night to make different decisions, when it stopped mourning over all I would lose, that's when I first had the thought of fighting back. Escape hadn't worked. Being found by a rescuer hadn't worked. That left it up to me, didn't it?

The problem was, I was just a young girl. One who was hungry and thirsty and weak, with a broken nose I couldn't breath out of. I had no weapons. I was tied to a pipe in what looked like the basement of an abandoned mine, left to releave myself as far at the end if the leash as I could, on the floor like a bad dog. And, it was dark save the thin streams of light sneaking through cracks.

My mind entertained itself for hours spinning elaborate tales of making a defense. Of all the things I had already tried each working in turn. I could chew through the plexicord, I could work the knots untied with my nails, I found a rusted bit of metal or a broken chip of the polycrete floor to cut with. When Gold Teeth or Naked Lady Tattoo came back I hid and ran out the door too fast for them to catch.

Then, cautiously at first, like dipping a toe in a pool to test it's temperature before diving in, I began having thoughts of making more than simply an escape. When Gold Teeth or Naked Lady Tattoo or even both, and sometimes with Deputy Tem Briley, came back I hid in the dark, tumped a barrel of acid on ther feet when they open the door, maybe one slips and falls into the expanding pool, screaming as his flesh dissolves and I escape up the stairs. Sometimes I got Deputy Tem Briley's gun and shot them all. Sometimes I got Naked Lady Tattoo's knife and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed them, cutting their throats, my hands bathed in their blood, watching them writhing on the floor as they die.

The images, vivid in my head, disturbed me at first. I didn't want to die with such ugliness in my heart, but these bad men had put it there, only a seeding, and I had watered it with my imaginings and it was grown beyond my control. I could ignore it, turn my back and make myself think of other things, but the seedling was now a great tree, dark thoughts always shadowing any I tried. The truth of my situation always came back, even when I tried to think of my mother or Captain Callis Brownlee or my dog Duke or Isbel, and with the truth came the thoughts of escaping always proceeded by revenge.

A thumping boom sounded from somewhere distant and above, probably out in the jungle but close enough that it pulled me from my daydream of vengence. I sat and listened, then I heard it again. And again. For a long time after I heard nothing, even as I strained my ears. Suddenly, there was a crash, the sound of gravel pelting and metal against metal. A door opened, an outside door to the station, heavy and groaning, and was slammed shut. The sound of hurried footfalls eventually came my way. The noise of feet on stairs, but it was a clumsy, faltering sound.

I wasn't ready to die.

 _No. Not yet._

 _Please, please, please._

 _I_ _'ll never tell._

I heard a sobbing, a pleading, and was surprised when I realized it wasn't coming from me. It was coming from outside the door as someone fumbled to get in, seeming not to know in their hurry if the door swung in or out to open. It was Gold Teeth. When he figured out how to operated the door he burst into the room, a trembling, coughing, sweatsoaked rag of a man holding a pistol in one jittery hand. I could smell the sharp odor of his body, and a hint of the jungle and something sulfuric clinging to his clothes. And iron. He smelled like iron as he closed the door as quickly and carefully as possible, shushing lightly to himself and the noisey hinges with a finger to his lips.

He backed away, air going in and out of him in rapid, shallow, panicked breaths. He paused once in his retreat, groaning, cursing as he clutched his chest. When his breathing returned to its rapid rate he backed away from the door another two steps, stopping just feet away from me.

The room was full of the sounds of his breathing and the tiny whimpers and mumbled, whining please he was making. Every now and then his breath would catch and he'd tip forward slightly and groan. It was when during one of these episodes, when he was quietest, that I heard a noise from somewhere close. Down the hall, maybe on the next level up, or on the stairs. It was a slight scrape of something against a wall or the floor.

Gold Teeth whimpered, "No, no, no, no..." as his fingers flexed around the butt of the pistol and he shifted from foot to foot. A piercing, vivid red, tiny dot shown beneath the door for an instant. I would have thought I imagined it except that Gold Teeth's legs shook so badly that...

And then I was looking at the hilt of the knife which stuck from his boot. It was a large knife. Larger than the one Naked Lady Tattoo had used to unlatch the acid barrel. And Gold Teeth was afraid. Instead of the sight of an adult in such a state feeding my own fear it fed something else. The dark I had fostered inside me saw its opportunity and rose up, gobbling greedily. A mind can only take so much. I forgot the red dot. Forgot the noise in the hall. I collected my feet beneath me, leaned forward against my tether and reached, reached as Gold Teeth sank to his knees. He didn't notice when I pulled the knife free, elated with the heavy feel of it in my hand. He was too busy whimpering or praying or begging for mercy to hear when I cut the tether. But he did hear me when I screamed. He whirled around, knees faltering and legs kicking out as he hit his bottom. His eyes were wide as the hand with the gun came up. But, he wasn't fast enough.

I was small. Injured. Weak with thurst and hunger, but righteous vengence and the promise of freedom have power all their own. The knife had a thick, sharp blade and I brought it down, handle gripped in both hands, plunging with all of my strength, aiming for his head. He turned away, tried to shove me aside, and instead the blade sank into the sweet spot between his collar bone and trapezius. I felt the cutting of muscle, the rending of flesh, the scrape of the flat of the blade against bone as the force of momentum slammed it to the hilt. Gold Teeth spammed slightly as I stepped back, marveling at what I had done. His mouth was open, tongue lolling around, brows furrowing and bobbing in a parody of surprise.

If I pierced his heart it was only a little. His death wasn't instantaneous, but from muscles tensed with shock or plain lucky balance he was frozen like that, sitting on the floor gaping at me.

It wasn't enough. Pure hatred, with all of the fear and horror and pain I had been through and forced to witness, it all bubbled up inside me and the thought of Gold Teeth being dead so quickly, so easily, wasn't enough. I had forgotten my freedom. Forgotten to wonder what he had been so afraid of. Forgotten the red dot. The shadow place had opened up inside me and with open arms I dove into the _kjuhte,_ the void.

That was the moment from which there would be no coming back. The moment which would shape the rest of my life. I know that now.

Seething, I grabbed the blade by the handle still sticking from the base of Gold Teeth's neck. Crying, biting my cracked lips until they blead, I worked the knife free. A tug and a jerk and it slid out with a similar feel to the going in, less satisfying but still a tingle-inducing sensation of sharpened metal against flesh. Gold Teeth made a choking sound, and as I raised the knife in both hands, hoisting it above my head, he sank away, eyes rolling up in his head. I screamed then, a wild and murderous sound of fury denied, and flung myself on him, stabbing his face, his neck, his shoulders. And I kept screaming until I felt his chest buck beneath me. I thought maybe he was coming back as Isbel had. Maybe he had only passed out but now he was coming back and I would have my revenge and I stabbed him and stabbed him some more, the blade sinking into his eyes, his mouth, his nose, any soft space and then only until it met significsnt resistance. My first and fatal blow had been lucky, but now I was simply jabbing wildly in unrestrained frustration, tears streaming down my face and mingling with splatters of blood. I stabbed until my arms burned and then I sat straddling his chest, sobbing quietly.

It wasn't enough, not hardly for what he had helped Naked Lady Tattoo to do, what he probably would have done if they hadn't thought Isbel dead, not for his part of what had happened after. Just not enough. I wailed, making another stab at his ruined face. The knife sank through his cheek and I jerked it out stabbing down again, whimpering and mumbling; angry, psychotic sounds rising up from my chest. I jabbed and jabbed and finally in anguished frustration at his lifelessness, not being able to punish him the way my mind though he should be punished, I grabbed his mandible and pulled, hacking, tearing the glittering gold encrusted maw from his face.

His chest heaved again and I heard bones breaking. It was like there was something inside him trying to get out. I jumped up, backing away and watching as his chest bulged and contorted from within. Bones snapped, blood bloomed dark on his shirt, then the bulge abated, sinking back down. That was when I saw the red dot, then two more collecting together in the center of Gold Teeth's chest, making a triangle of pinpoints in the center of the bloody blossom. I followed the thin beams trailing at an angle from each of the dots and when I looked up there was a...

Well, I didn't know what it was. It was just this huge thing. Shaped like a man. Too tall for the door. With a wild mane of shiny dreadlocks and weapons of all kinds gleaming. A bandolier of bones and teeth and small skulls hung across its chest.

 _Kv'var-de._ A hunter.

And it watched me, shoulder mounted gun beside its masked face still making minute adjustments with whisper soft whirring sounds, beams still pointed at Gold Teeth's chest. It seemed to look me over. I can't imagine what I looked like standing there with a knife in one hand and Gold Teeth's jaw in the other, heaving for breath and splattered with blood. I didn't even have it in me to be afraid and so we just looked at each other, me and this strange hunter until the thing in Gold Teeth's chest move again. Bone cracked and flesh tore and a larval creature the size of a small cat ripped it's way through bloodied clothing.

 _Z'skvy-de. R'kh. Kian_ _de Amedha._

It was smooth and gore covered. Opaque, infantile exoskeleton the color of frosted glass. When it opened its jaws and shrieked a second smaller mouth pistoned out. I wasn't afraid. I was angry. When the creature began coiling itself, without thinking, I fell on it and jammed the knife through its body, jammed so hard I felt the blade crunch through it pinning it to Gold Teeth's open chest, tearing through his back and slamming to a stop against the floor. The impact jarred my arms, and then the heel of my hand began to sting. An itching, burning clawed at the skin there and I pushed back wiping my hand on my pajama pants. Thin ribbons of smoke rose as the blood pooled in Gold Teeth's chest began to simmer like a stew around the creature. The knife blade seemed to wilt. The skin had blistered on the edge of my hand and had been sloughed off with my wiping but adrenaline kept me from feeling it as more than an itching, hot stinging sensation.

The creature writhed around the melting blade, thin limbs and tail flailing as it screeched, convulsed, twitched once, then went still.

A giddy, mad laugh erupted from my lips. When I looked up the hunter cocked his head. The shoulder mounted gun folded away behind his back and the three red beams coming from one side of his face winked out. He held a long, pointed spear in one hand and when he moved toward me a chattering, guttural noise from behind his mask stayed his intentions. After a beat I heard him make his own clicking reply and then he was stepping across Gold Teeth, the spear retracting with the flick of a wrist before he stowed it with one hand and grabbed my arm with the other.

I followed without protest, numb and still high on endorphins. Out the door. Up the stairs. Through rooms and then I was bathed in sunlight. The Creature Catchers' van was smashed into the side of the building just feet from the door. I saw it, but not really. Everything had become a fog and I was just floating along it its wake.

The jungle around us danced and swayed, trees whipping as if caught in a torrent as a small ship broke from camoflage and sat down in the road. It was dirty brown, shaped like a bulbous teardrop covered on the top with spikes and odd fins. The hunter pulled me after him, I assumed it was a him, bulky and muscled, and as we approached a small portal opened up. It was cramped inside. Another hunter sat against one wall. Unmasked and ugly. With a mouth crowned in fanged mandibles, head ringed with slick dreadlocks, wearing a different configuration of armor and strings of small trophies. I was lifted up and shoved into a seat seemingly called up from the floor next to it. Another him, and he scooted away, hissing in my direction and throwing a slew of clicks and growls at the hunter who had brought me who was calling up his own seat. The two seemed to bicker back and forth as they strapped in, their language a mix of snarls, clicks, growls, and guttural sounds only slightly resembling words. I was clipped in, too. And not gently. They didn't want me here with them, that much was clear.

"I wanna go home," I sobbed.

Neither offered reply.

The ship must have been on a form of automatic pilot for neither directed it. A forward section of wall dissolved into a clear screen and lights and symbols danced across the canted surface of a panel beneath. I watched as we lifted off, jungle trees tossing in our wake. Emerald City in the distance was punctuated with streamers of smoke, a few people scampered down and across the streets, small as ants and growing smaller. Then flames were licking at the edges of the view screen, snuffed out as we broke through Eudora Prime's atmosphere into the black of space.

I never thought to be scared. It was all so sudden and strange. The ship banked and jetted off round the planet. A larger vessel came into view, slipping free from a veil of its own camoflage. As we approached an opening appeared, wavering out of once hardened plate. The smaller ship slipped inside and set down gently. The engine spooled down and the view screen hardened back to a solid state as the door in back became opaque and melted away.

When we stepped off, me following one hunter and being followed by the other, there were three more hunters waiting. Three more males and they obviously didn't expect me and weren't happy about my being there. Then they all began snapping and clicking and gesturing in angry excitement. The hunter who had brought me step protectively to my front snarling an ugly-sounding slew of words. The others quieted and a door slid aside at the back of the docking bay. Another hunter emerged, but this time it was a her. A woman. Tall and slender, taller than the men. She had breasts which were barely covered by her scant garments and deadlocked, shiny hair beclasped with tiny rings. The hair swayed behind her hanging well past her butt. The men stepped aside as she approached. She greeted my two companions by placing a hand a shoulder each in turn and shaking it. With her other hand she reached and brushed a thumb across a pinwheel scar each bore on their foreheads. The two bowed to her at this touch and then I was grabbed roughly by my arm and dragged before her. She looked down at me and something like a smile curved her odd, almost insectile mouth. She took a knee, lowering herself closer to my level. There was a ring pierced through one of her lower mandibles and a hoop through a spiny brow.

I was shaking. Trembling in fear and the after effects of adrenaline. The air here tasted funny, and felt heavy in my lungs.

"I wanna go home," I mumbled.

She cocked her head and my words spoke back to me in my own quivering voice from some indecernable place.

My jaw quivered and hot tears leaked from my eyes unabated as I began to sob. And then she was holding me, enveloping me with her long arms, my cheek pressed against her warm bosom as her clawed hands gently stroked my face. She crooned softly, a bubbling, clacking noise. I could smell the gameyness of her breath. Then she lifted me up and carried me deeper into the ship.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** And this is what happens when I tell myself I'm going to work on other things first. Ha! Again, I wrote this on my phone during breaks so I'm sure there are typos. I'm still working on my Halo story, and though I'm WAY behind my projected completion date, I AM still working on it, in case any of you are reading this and wondering (*cough* KATT9033 *cough*).

There will be divergences from canon, as canon doesn't always agree with itself on some things. I'm making a lot of this up as I go. Awkward names to come.

Enjoy.

* * *

 **Chapter Two**

The ship has a peculiar smell. Not just the warm, reptilian, carrion scent of the hunters themselves. It is a semi-organic structure. A mish-mash of life and machine. More durable than any alloy _oomans_ know, yet it is able to rearrange itself as if made of wet clay. Breath breathes through the halls and spaces. Deep gurgling and belching, high-pitched humming and whining sounds are a constand accompanying noise. It's like being inside a giant whale with those rhythmic and lowing songs. Rib-like arcs climb the walls, curving up from the floor in open spaces to form pillars, all connecting to central spines which run the ceilings. Intermittent light peeks from indescernable places, illuminating just enough, casting shadows across the pitted surface of walls revealing hints of skelital shapes. Everything is beaded with condensationl and a curling mist drifts about the floor. The temperature is hot, humid.

The female carried me down a wide hall and we entered a lift. Inside it was cylindrical in shape, illuminated by its own muted glow. The air felt even heavier here and it was an exercise to draw it into my lungs. The lift came to life though the female neither spoke that I heard nor touched anything. It simply moved, going where she wished as if it knew. Which it did. I didn't understand the mechanics then and I hardly understand them now but they do make more sense once one has experienced that kind of connection with a ship. It acts as an extension of its heritor, encoded with DNA, linked to body and mind. Doors and lifts and thrusters and cannons become no different than arms and hands and fingers and toes. When you thirst, do you think individually about moving your arm, opening your hand, curling your fingers, grasping, and all the minute movements it takes to lift a glass of water to your lips? Do you think of what is involved in drinking, swallowing, or processing this liquid? Do you tell your kidneys to and how to operate? No, and that is the kind of connection _Mei'jadhi_ has with her ship. The kind all blooded hunters who are also Heritors of The Path have with their own.

Someone spoke, in that garbled, clicking language of theirs and I noticed we had been followed. I turned my head, arms wrapped around the female's neck, being carried upright against her chest like a toddler, small and helpless. Our accompaniment was one of the three males who had been waiting for the returning party. He was stout and wide, thick and musclar. But he wasn't like those I had come here with. He was older. His locks were grayed, the ends nearly white, and adorned with far more clasps. Short, spiny quills and bony protrusions sprung from his face along his brow ridges and at odd incriments crowning his head. Dark armor in slabs of leather and oiled metals contoured to his bulky body in places, the nakedness of large muscles and torso was crisscrossed with black net. What flesh I could see was yellow-green and mottled with darker plate-like scales. He had a thatch of short, grayed quills on his upper chest. These peeked from beneath a bandolier of gruseom trophies which ran from one shoulder, traversed a wide chest and a well-fed belly, and attached to a thick belt on the opposite side at his narrow hips.

He didn't look at either of us, just kept his head straight as he stood at the female's side, a full head shorter than her. When the female did respond it was a clipped sigh and soft chittering. The male raised a spiny, gray brow and humphed in response. They took turns prattling back and forth until the lift stopped. We exited and he followed. I watched him over the female's shoulder and for a moment he glanced at me, his crabby, mandibled mouth curving up at the sides, eyes widening as if to make a pleasant expression. He winked at me. Such a common and _ooman_ gesture, but his face so quickly returned to it's former state and his eyes darted from me that I was sure I had imagined it.

A door whispered open and we entered a large room. The walls were covered with strange instruments, pointy and dark and sharp, formed into odd shapes, some with hoses and tubing attached. Saws and blades and monsterous cuttlery gleamed everywhere.

When the female moved to set me down I latched onto her more tightly, terrified of what was to come. She hissed softly in reprimand, easily peeling my arms and legs from her body, depositing me on the edge of a table where I sat eyeing my surroundings as I trembled. It was some manner of medical ward clear enough though alien and oily and dank. It smelled aweful. Pungent with putrid scents my nose couldn't discern. The female was holding my arm, standing to one side as the male puttered around digging through drawers called out of the walls.

He retrieved what he was looking for and came to point at me with a device. A thin beam of bright yellow twinkled to life and swept across my body. The device gave a warbling chirp, the beam snaped off, and a hologram projected from the upper surface. It was a hologram of a miniature me. The male touched the yellow image and panned in and out on neon-red flashing points. The heels of my hands, spots on my arms and feet, and winking most frantically was the center of my face. Just that fast my injuries had been cataloged, assessed, and priorarized.

The male seemed satisfied with this and turned away as the device began speaking chitinous words. He grumbled a high-pitched noise of annoyance and gave it a shake, silencing the voice as he stowed the device away. Rummaging through more drawers called out of the walls the male was clicking and clacking as he collected up things, garnering a few remarks from the female.

When he had all he needed, a shelf formed out of the table where he lined the collection up and set to work. There was a long tweezerish thing, a small device shaped like a closed flower, what looked like a chip of rock, and a vial of florescent goo. With a tap the flower-device opened into a shallow bowl and the male crushed the stone fragment in his palm, dropping the bits into the waiting vessel. Watching closely, I noticed he was missing the last two fingers on one hand and the tips of all but the thumb on the other. He uncorked the vial, dribbling the goo over the stone pulp then sturring it about with the tweezer. The mixture bubbled and steamed and smelled awful. Like gasoline and something I couldn't name.

The female brushed a long hand over my arm in a soothing motion as I watched the male tease some of the noxious goop with the tweezer. He set the bowl down and turned his attention to me. He reached his three-fingered hand toward my face and when I squirmed I felt the female's grip like iron close on my arm as she hissed again in rebuke.

"I wanna go home," I shouted far more loudly that I had intended, my voice shrill in my own ears as I looked emploringly from one ugly face to the other. "Please let me go home," I begged as everything rushed in on me. It was like a whirlwind inside my head, inside my chest.

The male looked at the female and grumbled something to her. She jerked her head sharply, tendriled hair-like locks jangling, eyes narrowed as she chittered angrily back.

"I won't tell anybody, I promise," I was crying, hiccupping, struggling to breathe, "I want my mom."

The male snarled now, not at me, and the female looked at him hard before averting her eyes and muttering, folding her arms, hanging her head and turning away. He glared at her back, then his face softened, taking on a look of resignation as he chittered softly and turned to me. He reached for my face again, slowly this time, his three-fingered hand splayed as if to show it was empty. He had a thumb, index and middle finger, and a penunsula of palm where the others were missing. He made little non-threatening sounds as he drew his hand near and wiped the tears from my face. He cooed something, his bright amber eyes wide as the back of his hand traveled down one cheek then the other. He carefully cupped my chin, grasping my face between thumb and forefingers, and leaned in close enough for me to smell his spicy breath. He turned my head this way and that to inspect my nose. I felt the female place a hand again on my shoulder, I thought as reassurance. But, she grabbed me. Hard. The hand on my shoulder shoved me down on my seat while her other reached to envelop my head and push it tight into the male's palm. At the same time he tightened his grip, thumb and fingers jammed into my cheeks, keeping my mouth partly open. His other hand came up with the tweezer, florescent goo in its grasp.

I tried to scream, tried to fight, but it was useless. The male jammed the tweezer up my left nostril. It burned, white hot and amazing and everything went dark.

I came to screaming against the memory of a pain which was no longer there, thrashing against hands which were no longer holding me, and fighting with alien monsters who were no longer assaulting me. With eyes screwed shut my arms flaled wildly in empty air. There was something touching my face. I swatted it and it fell away. I gulped for breath, in through my mouth and out my nose in heavy chuffs as I hauled myself up onto hands and knees and braved to open my eyes.

The space around me was not the one I remembered. The lighting was more dim. The temperature slightly warmer. Those same rib-like structures spanned the walls but here instead of medical cuttlery the space was decorated with many large skills and other such macabre testaments. Ancient weaponry was collected into collage-like displays. Bits and pieces of weird artifacts hung in groups. Inset coves here and there held gruesome wonders. There were small, mummified corpses, and tiny but whole skeletons posed as if running or rearing or fighting. All were creatures and things I had never before seen, each piece lit for great drama and maximum display.

It was terrifying. Everywhere I looked were dead things, heads and bodies and parts. I realized I was on a huge bed covered in hides and furs in varying shades and textures. I could make out paw shapes, tails, and flattened eyeless heads at the edges of the pelts.

The air started to feel heavy again in my chest. My arms and legs shook and I lay back down and curled into a fetal ball, wishing it make it all go away.

A hand touched my back and I looked up to see the female's face loom into view. She chicked softly and retrieved what I recognized as a mask. Like the kind the nurse had put on my face when I had my appendix removed, like they had used when I woke up from cryo on the _Excelcior,_ the kind that covered only nose and mouth and pumped in fresh, clean oxygen. This mask was too big for my face, and shaped a bit wrong, and was a dirty-looking shade of brown. And, it wasn't connected to anything. Still, the female sat down gracefully and extended it to me, encouraging me to sit up. That strange smile pulled at her even stranger mouth. I sat, but when I didn't respond further she cupped the mask over her own face, over her wide mouth and... there was no nose... as if to demonstrate, then she offered it to me again. I took the mask and peered inside, hearing a faint hissing sound and smelling something familiar. The moment it tickled my lungs an instinctual, primal part of my brain took over. I pressed the mask to my face with a ravenous hunger and breathed deeply, the air lighter, going in with little effort. The female chittered, bright amber eyes closing to happy slits as her mouthed formed that alien smile. She clicked and purred and spoke in that odd language of theirs as she touched my arms and legs and face and hair as I simply sat and breathed.

I wanted to slap her hands away. I wanted to make this not real.

Instead, I squirmed, all to her sharp hisses and clicks of protest as she ignored my complaints and gingerly touched me here and there with featherlike movements. As I watched I saw that a thin layer of sticky, florescent gel had been smeared on my scrapes and cuts. Blood and gel stained my dirty pajama top. I noticed the burns to my hands were scabbed over but didn't sting. I pulled the mask away and touched my nose. It was still a bit swollen and sore, and there was crusted blood still clinging to my lips and nostrils, but my nose was right and working. The female chittered and when I looked at her she was looking back expectantly.

She pressed a palm to her chest and clicked slowly, _"Mei'jadhi."_

I didn't know what to think so I shook my head. She patted her chest and repeated the word.

"I don't..." I began but she tittered, tossing her mane of locks.

She patted her chest again, _"Mei'jadhi,"_ then reached for me and placed her huge hand against my chest, cocking her head. From somewhere a man's voice spoke, an _ooman_ man, his voice full of fear and pain, " _Wh_ _at the hell are you_?"

I startled. But, she simply narrowed her eyes and pointed back at herself croaking even more slowly, _"May-jahd-hee,"_ before returning her hand to my chest and cocking her head.

"Oh," I said, "That's your name. _May-jahd-hee."_

Of course, I butchered it profusely but she clicked and nodded, apparently pleased.

Technically, her name is: _May-_ ascending high click- _ja_ into a deep hiss- squelch chip- _d-_ _hee_ into a short trill. But, I don't expect you to be able to manage that. I certainly didn't at first and barely do now.

The language is difficult for an outsider, to speak and to learn. It is more than the sum of its parts. It is alive, and shares a root with that of the _Hish._ In many ways the two are indecernable, the same but for minor sintax. One can try to break the words and sounds apart but to the untrained ear it is at its natural cadence animalistic noise. The different pitches, speeds, and successions of chirps, clicks, growls, and croaking, even posture and facial expression, constitute a large part of the language. It cannot be translated in a linear fashion. Certainly, what sounds as a mash of gutteral noises and clacking can be slowed down and broken its basest parts, though it was clear by watching and listening to _Mei'jadhi,_ doing so was a vocal exercise.

She patted my chest again and cocked her head.

"Charletta," I said, "I'm Charletta Brownlee but my mom calls me..." I broke off, a sudden well of emotion closing my throat.

Tears escaped my eyes absent my controll, falling in hot streams down my face. I did my best to choke them back and wipe them away but the floodgate was finally open.

 _Mei'jadhi_ emitted a curious click.

"I wanna go home," I said through gritted teeth, dropping the mask away from my face, "HOME! I want my mom!" I shouted as I broke into uncontrolled sobbing.

That was the only time she ever struck me in anger. The only time she ever had to. With an open palm across my face. Her large hand fast as lightening. Though it wasn't as hard as she was capable, it knocked me aside, stunned and frightened me. Halted my wailing. Let me know she had had enough and my outbursts would not be tolerated.

She straightened, looking at me, glaring as she hissed angrily. Her reaction had perhaps not been so much at my words but surely at my raised voice and insolent tone.

The experience frightened me into control of myself. I was terrified and I felt chastened. I had never liked disappointing adults. Seeing my _ooman_ mother cry over my poor grades just days ago had broken a piece of my moody teenage heart. My _ooman_ mother never knew it, and it didn't matter in the end, but that day in school I had worked harder than I ever had before and vowed to put in all the practice my tutors suggested from that day forward. Monday morning I was going to be a new pupil.

But that Monday morning never came for me. Instead I had gotten kidnapped over the weekend. I saw my best friend raped and murdered. I was held captive by savage men. I killed a man. Then, I was abducted by hunter aliens.

It started to fold in on me like an oppressive weight. My life had taken strange and amazing turns before, one after another, but this series was too much. Too awful. I was tired, and frightened for that matter. Who was to say what was really happening here? I was helpless in this odd nightmare.

 _"Care-let-yah," Mei'jadhi_ said with her gravely, chittnous voice.

I looked up and she extended a hand and ran it down the side if my face where she had struck me, prattling a slew of words, slowing when she said, _"Care-let-yah, ler't."_

She touched my cheek and ran her fingertips down my left forearm, clicking softly, her eyes watching where she touched me.

I hung my head, cupped the mask to my face to drown out the sound and cried. Where a normal teenager might cringe at the thought, I wanted my mom right then and there in the way an infant does, for comfort, for safety, for reassurance, and the emptiness without her only made my heartache greater. I wanted her to hold me close like she did when I was a little girl. I wanted her to tell me it would all be alright. I wanted to feel her arms around me like a protective blanket against all the evils in the galaxy. I wanted her to wipe my tears and...

 _Mei'jadhi,_ as if she knew this, collected me in her arms and I didn't fight it. She pulled me close, nestling my head against her chest and stroking my cheek.

 _"Mei'jadhi ler'tdi elouid,"_ she said softly, " _"May-jahd-hee lee-er-thee-dee e-loo-eed,"_ over and over again, like a chant punctuated by clicks and growls.

 _My dark child._

It would be a long time until I understood the words; even longer before I was fluent enough to understand their significance.

To this day I do not believe I am calable of grasping it. They do not experience emotions as _oomans_ do, though they do feel. It is simply more complex.

For a long time I assumed that my pleas to go home had gone unanswered simply because they, _Mei'jadhi_ and the old male with missing fingers, didn't understand. But they did.

Yes, they can understand _ooman_ languages, but not because they care what you have to say. Mimicry adds to the hunt and knowing many alien words and phrases is tactically useful, and can be entertaining.

I have spent over fifty years with them and I am more them than _ooman._ Still, even now I'm sure my clicks and clacks and growls sound to them aa a foreigner with a bad accent. But they don't seem to mind.

The point is, _Mei'jadhi_ knew I wanted to go home right from the start. Oh, the young hunters and the old male knew also, but they couldn't have forced her to take me back. She was Matriarch and Elder of the HalfBlood Clan. No one aside from those highest of the _Yautja_ Elder Clan could make her do anything, and they rarely interacted with the lesser clans, let alone to interject themselves in the decisions of those clan leaders unless it was a serious matter. _Kalacta,_ Elder of Elders, Leader of Leaders, certainly wouldn't waste his time hunting down the female leader of an insignificant clan who had decided to entertain herself with an _ooman_ pet just to overrule her. It wasn't, after all, unheard of, and if he sought _Mei'jadhi_ out it would be for more intimate reasons.

Still, that she did take me caused a rift in an already small and volatile clan. Her reasons I later came to accept, so you needn't hate her on my behalf.

But, I really did want to go home then, and for a long time after. What I didn't want was _Mei'jadhi_ angry with me. I never mentioned wanting to leave again. Instead, I let her hold me until my tears were, for the time, all cried out. When at last I sat up, wiping my tears with the heels of my hands I asked tentatively, "What about the other one?"

 _Mei'jadhi_ looked at me critically, her head tilting slightly as her eyes studdied my face and her mandibles moved ever slightly.

"The man one," I said.

She chittered.

I struggled in my head on how to communicate then finally put a hand on my chest, "Carletta," I said, then put the hand on her chest, _"Mei'jadhi."_

She nodded slowly.

I set the mask aside and raised both hands. I closed the last two fingers on my right hand and folded down the top two joints of the fingers of my left.

She studied the arrangement then made a sudden clicking sound, her mandibles wavering as her chest heaved. She was laughing.

 _"Warsaun've,"_ she growled out slowly.

 _"War-shawn-vay,"_ I said.

 _Mei'jadhi_ nodded with a smile.

Then she stood and extended her arms to me. I shook my head and climbed down from the bed, mask held to my face. The truth was I needed to feel my feet on the ground. These alien hunters could have easily killed me, might still, but for now they had tended my wounds.

 _Mei'jadhi_ chittered and waved me after her as she stepped away.

She guided me across the room to where a wide door cracked loose from the wall and slid open. Beyond was smaller room though still large, unadorned with gruesom trophies. As I stepped inside a port was called up from the floor. It was no larger than a wide seat, equipped with a central hole. From a far wall nozzles extruded and began issuing a fine mist.

Toilet and shower. I was to clean myself up and use the facilities if I had need.

Once I nodded my understanding _Mei'jadhi_ stepped back into the outer room.

I stripped off my soiled pajamas, removing the mask and breathing the thick air as I did so, and stepped into the shower. It was odd. No soap of any kind. Just a warm, slightly oily mist. Enough moisture to break loose dirt and crusted blood and send it streaming down my body. I stood there for a long while letting the moisture soak me while I breathed through my awkward mask, contemplating myself until I heard _Mei'jadhi's_ voice.

"Care-let-yah," she called.

I tiptoed dripping to the door and peeped out to see her casually walking my way. I stepped back, doing my best to preserve my modisty when she entered carrying strange garments. Guiding me to a spot on the floor, I felt air rush from deck and walls to dry my skin before she set about helping me dress.

As you already know the clothing we use is somewhat different than _ooman_ clothing. We are not modest in any manner. Clothing is not intended to cover ones nakedness but to protect vital parts.

There was first a net material which covered legs, torso, back, and upper chest; each piece connected by a thin strand. Easily tangled. A small device was clipped to one side of my chest. She tapped it, causing the net to contract and adjust to my frame. Another few taps and I began to feel cooler. _Mei'jadhi_ cocked her head, issuing small clicks as she showed me how to work the device and I adjusted it to suit my desire. Then a belted cloth was presented for my groin, and a similar arrangement for my chest. It all left me feeling more exposed than covered but comfortable.

She looked disapprovingly at my hair which was a mess of unruly, tight curls come partly loose from twin puff balls. Frizzy and matted and wild. _Mei'jadhi_ clearly disgarded the idea of dealing with this right then as she straightened and bid me to follow her out into the main room.

I followed and as she approached the far wall another door clicked loose, revealing its presence and gliding open. Out we went, down a hall, around bends, up a short set of large stairs, through more halls, my bare feet pat-pat-patting against the soft deck and _Mei'jadhi_ strolling at a pace slow enough that I didn't have to run but did have to move quickly to keep up.

Somewhere up ahead came the smell of cooked meat and the noise of chittering laughter punctuated by booming, snarling song. We rounded a final turn and there was awide, arching doorway with a casing of thick, twisted, ribbed columns. Torches illuminated swatches of the walls at either side. My footsteps faltered.

No, I stopped in my tracks.

It very much looked like the entrance to a dungeon. Or like the entrance to the Wicked Witch of the West's castle. Spiked protrusions hung from the top of the arch like fangs, and the torches glowed like demonic eyes. Their sconces were capped and cored skulls, the fire inside flickering and dancing behing broken eye sockets and silent, screaming mouths.

The revelry had gone silent. _Mei'jadhi_ issued a series of clicks and I looked up to see her watching me. She gestured me forward and I started to shake my head, but her lowered brows and widening mandibles frightened me more in that moment than whatever awaited beyond that gaping doorway's maw.

I swallowed and forced my feet forward on shaking legs. _Mei'jadhi_ clicked approval and waited until I was at her side. She indicated the space beyond the threshold and I looked to see five hunters seated around a cozy mess area. That is, if gratitatously grotesque decor illuminated by more skull sconces, sweating walls, and a background noise of the ship whinning and belching could be considered cozy.

 _Warsaun've,_ with his missing fingers, was at one head of a large oval table with one each of the young hunters and one each of two other hunters to right and left. The tabletop was strewn with stone chargers of picked over carcasses, stoneware decanters and metal goblets, and square plates of wood plank with half-eaten portions.

My _ooman_ mother had let me try a sip of wine once. I had sniffed it first, and that same scent, but more pungent and raw, lingered in the air with the bloody smell of undercooked, gamey meat and alien sweat.

The men stood when _Mei'jadhi_ entered, staring at her as if they had been caught at something and were uncertain if she was going to be angry. It is rude to begin a celebratory blooding feast without the blooding hunt's host. _Warsaun've_ clicked and chittered then touched the pinwheel scar on his forehead with the pad of a thumb. He gave a slow nod. The others did the same as they clicked and chittered in unison, all guarded and waiting for her reaction.

 _Mei'jadhi_ grumbled and clicked and brushed a thumb over her own scar without enthusiasm. The men visibly relaxed and returned to their seats. All except for _Warsaun've_. He moved to meet us, gesturing back at the others with rattling clicks. _Mei'jadhi_ snorted and raised a hand to wave him off. He seemed satisfied and inclined his head, eyes darting to me for a second and one flashing closed in a wink before he straightened and turned back to the table.

It was unsettling. I knew now that I hadn't imagined it before, but I couldn't be certain it held the same connotation of camaraderie as the _ooman_ variant. Considering what had happened after last time he had winked at me, my concerns were not unreasonable, well as it had turned out.

As we approached the table two seats formed up from the deck at the unoccupied head. One sized for _Mei'jadhi_ and the other clearly intended for me. She pointed with a grunt as she walked away. I sat and the seat gently glided upwards so I was at a comfortable proximity.

 _Warsaun've_ looked at me with a curiously side-cocked head while the two other hunters stared across at oje another amd the two young males stared at their plates, sullen and silent, whatever revelry they had been experiencing gone at our appearance. More specifically, at _my_ appearance.

One of the young males chittered something quietly to the other across from him and the two croaked what passed for laughter. The other two, mentors is what they were, cast sidelong glares and _Warsaun've_ snapped, bringing them to silence. I tried to be as small in my seat as possible, holding the mask to my face with both hands as if clinging to a lifeline.

The young male to my left, perhaps too deep into his _c'nilp_ to think better of it, reached to the center of the table, grasped a small carcass and with the flick of a wrist sent it flying to land directly in front of me with a wet, greasy splat. I jumped, staring wide-eyed at the thing. It looked like a baked Guiana Pig, melted fur clinging to flesh which had blistered open. It's body was bloated, little legs and head chared black, tiny paws contorted and clawing at the ceiling while its mouth gaped with overly large encisors.

I must have paled, or turned green, or maybe I uttered a sound of surprise for the young male cackled at my expense. The mentor at his side stood and drug him hissing to his feet by a fistfull of locks. I was out of my chair at this outburts and they were both roaring, snarling, pushing and shoving. _Warsaun've_ banged a fist against the table top and _Mei'jadhi_ barked as young hunter and mentor kicked out at each other, struck holds simultaneously and tumbled to the deck. _Warsaun've_ sprang from his chair but _Mei'jadhi_ was on them first, chattering and clicking angrily, maneuvering her lithe but larger and more powerful body between them and taking them both to heel by their silky tendrils. They snarled, the younger still ready to fight but the elder quickly signaling submission and earning release. He backed away and _Mei'jadhi_ put a knee into the young hunter's gut doubling him over. She jerked his head up and struck a heeled fist across his face so fast I barely registered exactly what had transpired. Glowing green blood spattred the floor and she shoved the offending hunter stumbling into his mentor. Pausing only long enough to draw breath she then screamed at them, long and chittering and fast, gesturing wildly as the two grudgingly cowered and hurried from the room. _Mei'jadhi_ wasn't finished there, she turned to the other mentor and young hunter, pointed at them with index and middle fingers splayed, snapped and clicked and snarled. _Warsaun've_ protested, but _Mei'jadhi_ silenced him with a low chitter and the two elders stared at one another in barbed silence as this young hunter and his mentor left the room also.

"Care-let-yah?" I heard _Mei'jadhi_ enquire when they had gone.

I was hiding beneath the table and peeked out to see her. She smiled, muttering a soft series of clicks and extending a hand to me. She gestured to my seat and I scurried to it, resuming my former post and riding the chair as it once again lifted me to the table.

The two began cackling, _Warsaun've_ speaking first in low clicks. _Mei'jadhi_ listened, said her piece, then sauntered off. _Warsaun've_ began clearing the vacated spots, dropping plates and goblets, chargers and half-eaten foodstuffs into schutes which formed up from the floor to meet him. As he did this the table itself began receeding, sides flowing away, empty seats melting into the deck, remaining seats easing forward, the whole arrangement shrinking from seating for seven to one for three. When all this had done _Mei'jadhi_ returned and set a large bowl of strange but discernable fruits and vegetables before me.

Looking back, it was grossly impolite of me to have snatched up the first one I could lay my hand on uninvited. _Warsaun've's_ spiny gray brows arched up but _Mei'jadhi_ didn't offer reprimand. Truthfully, I felt sick to my stomach, but it was the kind of gnawing nausia of intense hunger, exhaustian, and prolonged fear.

The fruit I selected was a _syrakna,_ softball-size and bright pink, with a thin opaque skin like a plum and sweet, jucy, fleshy meat. I fought breathing and gobbling bites until I remembered I could breathe the air albeit with some difficulty. I set the mask aside and downed two _syrakna,_ gnawing them to their stony pits, before trying another offering. A yellow-green root vegetable, _bakjn._ It was crisp like a raw carrot but salty-sweet. I was half way through this when _Warsaun've_ chirped lightly. When I looked he was smiling, sitting casually in his seat with an elbow on the table and his three fingered hand clapping a goblet.

He chittered again, his eyes lifting to _Mei'jadhi_ who clicked lightly then sighed and flicked a wrist before selecting from the bowl a blue-gray and oblong _dah'yeyi._ She bit into the fruit fiercely.

I never learned to like that particular fruit, it was too grainy no matter the ripeness.

 _Warsaun've_ called up a pannel from the tabletop at his left hand and began tapping at its surface with taloned fingers. When he had finished he looked at me, clicked, and a chittenous voice spoke from the walls, groups of words in succession, languages one after another until I heard, "Do understand?"

I took a sharp breath of heavy air, nodding my head quickly. "Yes, I understand," I said before pressing the mask to my face and sucking in a breath of lighter air. He tapped the panel again and it melted back into the table.

"I... I want... What's going to happen to me? Why am I here? Can't you just..." I babbled through the mask before casting a wairy glance at _Mei'jadhi_ and stopping myself.

 _Warsaun've_ held his hands palms out and patted the air in a placating, hushing gesture. _Mei'jadhi_ sniffed, a sucking sound from somewhere in her cheeks.

 _Warsaun've_ went on. "Slow. Do not to know all _ooman_ words. Translate data incompleted. Not is use for talk. Use listen and hunting and intelligence gather."

 _Mei'jadhi_ issued a chitter, and the same voice translated, "Work not this way. She learn language ours."

He looked at her and clicked, "Patience. Is child," he sat back and folded his arms across his wide chest, resting them on his belly. He smiled, "Great time one so small walk ship. Last was you."

 _Mei'jadhi_ humphed, but looked at him and smiled slightly.

I yawned, exhausted mentally and physically. My mind overflowed with thoughts to process and with my belly full my body was done.

 _Mei'jadhi_ rose and took my arm, clicking and purring softly, "To sleep."

 _Warsaun've_ nodded and I slipped from my seat willingly. _Mei'jadhi_ lead me out of the room and back down the halls and wide, short stair. We were back in the sleeping quarters where I climbed atop the soft furrs without prompt. She adjusted the mask on my face, clicking and clacking softly, her strange words now without benefit of translation.

I breathed the easy air and sleep took hold of me.

I don't know how long I slept, but I didn't dream. What great mercy. The nightmares would come soon enough but that first true sleep aboard the hunter ship I had reprieve. I woke like being called from darkness through a veil into the light. The room was its comfortable dim. I was on my side nestled in the deep, soft fur. The mask was close to my face hissing softly. I was alone. Yes, of course I tried to see if I could leave. Silly, as there was no way for me to escape the ship and I hadn't a clue where to go from the room if I could have, but the door from the quarters would not appear and open to me.

I wasn't alone long. _Mei'jadhi_ returned from wherever she had been, carrying things which she placed on a table which formed up from the floor. Nothing frightening. Things I somewhat recognized. A large-tooth comb carved from bone and a stone pot containing a black, tar-like goo.

Apparently it was time to deal with the mess that had become of my hair.

The process was not fun. Not that it ever had been, but this was different. Two pedestals rose up near the table and I climbed up, submitting to what would be an hours long and semi-torturous experience. _Mei'jadhi_ was not gentle, raking the comb through, oiling my hair with a dark goo from the pot. Once that was finished she began twisting complex braids, stopping, undoing every one and beginning the process over again each time I made so much as a sound. By the time it was done my head throbbed and I was certain my scalp was bleeding. She turned me around and inspected the work.

Pleased, _"Mei'jadhi ler'tdi elouid," Mei'jadhi_ chittered softly, those same words I had heard her say before.

I didn't know it, but it was a declaration of her intentions.

I was now presentable for what came next. She led me from the quarters and through the ship. We entered a lift and when it opened after a descent we stepped out into a vast docking bay. Moored there was the smaller ship I had been brought here on. Bulbous and spiny. I saw _Warsaun've_ standing with the two newly blooded youths and their older mentors and another hunter I had never seen before. Another male judging by his size and bulky appearance. Across the bay there was a long pedestal and atop it lay yet another hunter. That one was dead. Green, glowing blood spilled from his mangled body.

As we approached the standing group they watched. I slowed to walk in _Mei'jadhi's_ shadow, stopping as she approached the males. She clicked and chittered to each in turn besides _Warsaun've,_ touching the scar on their foreheads as they touched hers. When She came to the lone mentor they went through the ritual, but ended it by them leaning close, their foreheads touching as she clicked softly. Her condolences for his student who had not survived.

When this was done the lone mentor clicked, leaning to the side and motioning to me.

 _Mei'jadhi_ tittered something and he nodded. I looked to _Warsaun've_ for some kind of explanation. He only winked.

The hunters nodded then, brushing their own forehead scars with a thumb in a now familiar gesture. When _Mei'jadhi_ and _Warsaun've_ did likewise the others turned and walked away, breaking off into their respective student/mentor pairs, the lone one walking toward where his dead student lay.

The deck began to reform beneath their feet, flowing like water, rising to envelop each pair, the finished result three smaller ships. An opaque wall rose between _Mei'jadhi, Warsaun've,_ and myself. It rose to the ceiling high above and flowed wavering to the walls. The newly reformed ships came alive with muted lights and a fiery haze from exhaust vents. The hull of _Mei'jadhi's_ ship rippled and slid away and the three lifted, gliding out into the blackness beyond.

I never saw any of them again. It had to have been years before anyone aside from the three of us walked the ship.

 _Nanjut'de._ That is the name given to _Mei'jadhi's_ ship, and the feeling I most associate with that early span of my time on it. There is no word in the _ooman_ language which directly translates. It is a word which references that place between life and death. A mental state of being rather than a physical one.

 _Nan-joot-dee,_ to experience life without really living it.

 _Nanjut'de_ is mother ship if you will, for the HalfBlood Clan.

What does that mean? I didn't know. Even when I knew that was what they were called I didn't understand it. Not for several year's time.

You're not ready. It is too complicated to explain just now.

Where was I? Oh, yes, after the hunters left. Those were quiet years. Hard years full of learning. I had a whole new set of social mores to learn, and an entire written and spoken and subtle language to acquire. _Warsaun've_ tried to make it easier. You see, he was a scientist, a scholar, something of an engineer. A little bit of everything really. He was a hunter, make no mistake about that, but his second great love was acquiring knowledge. I've said they don't care to learn the _ooman_ languages beside what can be useful or entertaining, and that is true. But, having me there put _Warsaun've_ in a bit of an intellectual dilema. It's a bit like...

Well, it'd be like me asking your opinion of, say, Warthogs. Most _oomans_ don't know enough about Warthogs to have an opinion. They are simply animals which exist. I imagine you've gone months, _years_ without even thinking about a Warthog. You know them on an abstract level. You might see one in a book or on a vid and not even know what it's called or you might think, _'Oh. Yes, there's_ _a_ _Warthog,'_ and go on about your life without giving the aminal another thought for long stretches of time if ever. I'm sure there are those few who know a great deal about them. Some who know them as potentially dangerous, more intelligent than the majority would give them credit for. To others they are at most a neuscence and so long as the filthy, backward swine stay where they belong and don't get in the way or cause a problem not a care is given. There are those few who live or can afford the luxury of traveling close enough to know them as fearsome game. Just smart enough, just high enough on the evolutionary ladder to present a challenge. Potentially deadly. A pleasure to hunt. Trophies for the taking. Deliscious to eat.

That is how both _Yaujta_ and _Hish_ view _oomans_ for the most part. _Oomans_ simply are. It matters none what the opinion, so they don't expend energy thinking about it unless it suits them.

But, let's say you're one of those who don't know enough about Warthogs to care one way or another. And let's say one day you found yourself with one in your midst, with the opportunity and the medium and the means to speak to it. Would you?

I imagine you would, even if you didn't care what it had to say. You'd talk to the animal if you could.

The _Nanjut'de_ is smart. A ship. A machine. Alive. Possessing vast knowledge and abilities. The more I talked the more it learned the syntax and grammar of my _ooman_ language and the better it translated. _Warsaun've_ was pleased with this new knowledge where _Mei'jadhi_ found it an unnecessary excess. The only time and place I had the benefit of translation was while in the dining hall at meals, and that only lasted the short length of _Mei'jadhi's_ patience for _Warsaun've's_ curiosity and my ignorance. She expected me to me to learn to speak as they did. Every _ooman_ word I spoke even when conversing with _Warsaun've_ to better the _Nanjut'de's_ bank of knowledge was salt in her wounds. Wounds I would not come to understand until later or to appreciate for myself until long after that.

Forgive me. I've gotten off track, again.

Perhaps I was more to the both of them than a Warthog. An opportunity neither would have had otherwise. They cared for me, as much as their kind is able. They love, yes, but not as you understand it. I know they both loved me, certainty as much as they loved one another. But such a feeling came with a price. A price had I not paid my story might have ended there, never to be told.

The ship was wonderous. Even the limited parts I was granted to see during my early time there. I had my own quarters, a room which was molded off of _Mei'jadhi's._ My own space with faculties. Bare. A space which was more a cell than any manner of bedroom as I knew it. During the sleeping hours I was kept like a prisoner. Not permitted to wander about. When the nightmares of my experiences visited me I was left to fight them is their way. When I was allowed out I was always accompanied. My world there was small. _Mei'jadhi_ would take me sometimes to a vast garden. Cave-like, enormous, with bushes and vines and trees sprouting from the very walls and the dark, soft earthen deck benetsth our feet. Vines hung from the ceiling, easy to pluk fruits and vegetables for a woman of her stature.

There were animals there. Strange animals roaming and slithering freely in the soft glow and shadows. Splashing in glimmering pools and streams of crisp water. This was the place where I first learned to hunt for hours on end, with weapons and instruction supplied by _Warsaun've. Mei'jadhi_ taught me as well, but it was her habit to watch and provide example.

In due time I came to breath with ease their heavy air, supplemented atimes by that from my own respirator. I spoke less and less my native tongue. I grew stronger. Learned to hide in plain sight. To cloak. To watch. To listen and to stalk with patience. To me it was but a time like every time else in my life, but to _Mei'jadhi_ it was everything.

When I succeeded in my first kill, a large furry mammalian creature which _Warsaun've_ taught me how to dress and preserve the hide, there was a dinner that same evening. One in which my kill was presented as the main course. A gamey, greasy meat. The first I consumed. The first I was _allowed_ to consume and I ate it without a second thought, with abandon and great hunger. It was not as spectacular as a blooding fiest by any means, but it _was_ a celebration in its own right. It was then I understood I had passed some test. The weeks and months, a year perhaps...for time has a far more abstract meaning for us... my time of learning to hunt had culminated in that moment. The moment of truth for me. Was I capable of being a hunter, or had I simply killed before out of instinct to survive? _Mei'jadhi_ and _Warsaun've_ seemed in agreement it was the latter. I had passed the trial, and from one time into the next.

 _Mei'jadhi_ added to my hair a clasp, first holding it between thumb and index finger and turning it in the light so I could see. Etched in the gold metal was a pinwheel like that seared into my companions' foreheads. Then she brought forth another. This one was silver, and in black, circling around was a stylized depiction of... that thing. You know the one. The thing that had come out of Gold Teeth's chest so long ago. _Kiande amedha._ This one looked different than the one I had killed, it had long limbs and an angular body, but the extended piston-like, secondary mouth gave it away.

 _Mei'jadhi_ secured the clasp a space below the other on the same lock of hair. She stood back and looked pleased with the result.

 _Warsaun've_ presented to me the pelt of the very creature whose carcass lay cooked to a bloody rare on the table before us. He too added a gold clasp to my hair beneath the others. Plain and simple. Then, from his belted kit he brought forth a jawbone. _Ooman._ Two teeth glittering gold in the center. From it a length of cord had been secured and this _Warsaun've_ looped about my neck.

At last I was bedecked with what would only be the first of my trophies. The testaments to what I was in their eyes and all I would later come to be. _Mei'jadhi_ touched all of these one after another, pausing to look upon the clasps, turning the lock of my hair gently in her hand as she chittered softly those same words I had heard her say time and time before, _"Mi'jadhi ler'tdi elouid."_

 _My dark child._

It was done.

The time which passed afterward was slow. How long? Years perhaps. Time for us is not as it is for _oomans._ A year, a day, a century, these have little meaning. There is only the times which came before, the time that is now, and the times yet to come. I became a woman, in the way _ooman_ females do, and learned to deal with the nasty, monthly affair in the absence of adults who understood it.

We roamed the galaxies, stopping at inhabited planets. My skills at hunting growing with each such forray. My inherent and _ooman_ sense of right and wrong, empathy and sympathy slipping away with each kill, watching my collection of trophies grow. My hair adorned with clasps and rings for each. The nightmares of my previous life visited me less and less as my memories of that time faded. All but the simmering rage. All but the boiling hate and sorrow which had found focus. When the nightmares did haunt my dreams I wasn't afraid of the memories of things which lurked in the dark and in the shadow, for I had become one of them. My life became all about the hunt at the sides of my hunters.

They taught me the stories of the Great Hunts, the myths and legends of _Yautja_ history and lore. The Great Division of _Yautja_ and _Hish,_ and told stories of their individual Trials.

 _Warsaun've_ did most of the talking, it is in a male's nature to tell such stories. Stories of bravery and conquest, showing off his scars and trophies.

But, like _Mei'jadhi,_ his was a life with a piece missing. What were trophies and scars and tales of great hunts but to woo females? What female would want a male whose seed had no vigor? I came to understand what I was to them both: the child they could never have.

No, theirs was not a sexual relationship. _Warsaun've_ had been mentor to _Mei'jadhi_ in the time of her adolescence. Banished to the Clan, under his tutalidge she had passed the Training Trials, the Final Hunting Trial, and at last Blooding into adulthood and the Clan. She had then risen to the place of Matriarch, Elder and Leader of the HalfBloods. Though females are not generally such in _Yautja_ culture, she was not fully _Yautja._ She was a capable huntress, but one whose womb would forever be empty, her life void of the duies of child-making and rearing, free to become more than those of pure blood whose social mores did not strictly apply.

I was immersed in their world. Their language. Their ways. In time I ceased to be _Care-let-tah,_ and became, as they both called me, _Ler'tdi._

 _Dark Child._ At first a nomer of my physical color, and then a name which spoke of the hue of what I held inside, now simply a description of the darkness I am capable of.

I learned to fight in the manner of their kind and my skill in prolonging the hunt grew. I learned to love the hunt itself, to play with my prey, to revel in the fear I could instill in other living things.

No. I was not then a hunter of _oomans,_ though I wore Gold Teeth's jawbone about my neck. I am a killer. That I readily proclaim and that was all the jawbone signified, for _oomans_ are a revered prey. Not to be hunted by the unblooded. And I didn't, after all, _hunt_ Gold Teeth, did I?

But I did _kill_ him.

What's that now? Yes, there are other sentient beings beside _oomans,_ many, and those we hunted at our leisure and as was our want.

Oh, we came across _oomans_ once. On a distant world where we were hunting. Their small ship had gone undetected, too small to matter, void of energy signatures and dashed upon the rocks in the pit of a canyon. The _oomams_ were all dead in their cryo-tubes. Schriveled mummies gaping back at me from behind shattered glass.

Their unfortunate fate is why I suppose I still speak and understand this language so well. I found a data-tablet somewhere in the disheveled mess of belongings and equipment, _Mei'jadhi_ entertaining my curiosity with uncharacteristic charity. They didn't care anything for the ship, no more than you care for a common stone at the side of your path. But, I wanted to see inside and I suspect _Mei'jadhi_ wanted to see me seeing it. To know my reaction at whatever might lie there.

I felt nothing, save curiosity. No emotions at seeing the dead crew or their dust-covered, forgotten things. But the data-tablet intrigued me and this must have been evident enough that when I moved off to investigate other things _Warsaun've_ took it to give to me later. Charged from the _Nanjut'de's_ energy stores by a process I could never explain, the data-table contained books. Thousands upon tens of thousands of books. These I consumed at my leisure, and over my life I've barely scratched the surface of these banks of knowledge. Encyclopedea. Tomes of _ooman_ history. Sories both real and imagined. Someone's reading for pleasure, more than enough for several lifetimes, now mine.

And, so we hunted. I hunted. Game larger than myself by many times. Frearsom, amazing beings. Sometimes our hunts would last into what you would call months. All care taken to seek out the most worthy, to watch and learn, to draw out the kill to its culmination. Many pelts and hides were added to my bed; small trophies strung about my neck and larger ones adorning the walls of my quarters. I no longer required accompaniment to walk the ship in our time aspace, though many places still would not open to me. I had long stopped feeling an emptiness. Stopped feeling lonely and embraced the solitued of days, weeks, months of time aship without seeing either of my companions. Not even at meals. They are such solitary creatures by nature.

And just so quickly it ended, there came the when _he_ showed up.


End file.
